


backseat rhapsody

by vystrx



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: & the happy ending they deserve, 'catch me if you can' as a legitimate form of foreplay, .....sort of, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, I swear this fic was meant to be happy but it kinda got out of hand, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, and not communicating like at all, because i love it and nobody can stop me, finally a bad sex pun, high school kids doing high school things like carving dicks into lunch tables, pancake batter is actually gross and yes i made pancakes to figure this out, seriously it's pretty bad, steve definitely has a death wish, the 80s high school au that nobody asked for, the fireworks trope, this is finally happy i promise, tony and steve are pros at making awful decisions, violence that may or may not be hatecrime-y
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-02-19 19:03:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 51,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13130073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vystrx/pseuds/vystrx
Summary: steve rogers is a momma’s boy, football star with a cheerleader girlfriend, and the perfect picture of an all-american boy.enter: tony stark, leather-jacket wearing, cigarette-smoking, cherry-red convertible-driving troublemaker that always finds just the right way to get under steve’s skin.what could possibly go wrong?





	1. the beginning of the end

**Author's Note:**

> merry christmas, moa!! here's the marvel fic I've been promising you for about six months now, I hope it lives up to expectations <3

It’s hardly three days into senior year, and Steve Rogers is already bored out of his skull by the monotonous droning of the man in the front of the room as he writes out some complex formula on the chalkboard. He’s about ready to put his head down and fall asleep, even though it’s only fifteen minutes into first period and he’s got a few more hours of the same thing in front of him before the day’s done. The summer had lent a sort of nostalgia to the inside of a classroom, and come August, he was eager to get back to school, only to realize within thirty seconds of walking in the doors that he definitely did _not_ want to be there. Oh well. He scribbles down the now-finished equation on the board, hoping he’ll be able to get Peggy to explain it to him properly later.

 

The door opens. The class stirs to life for the first time since the bell had rung, whispers flitting around the room as a boy comes into view in the doorway, stepping into the class and casting an eye around the room. A cleared throat from the front grabs his attention, where Mr. Coulson is looking at him expectantly, waiting for a reason as to why his class is being interrupted like it’s the end of the world. A giggle comes from the corner at the boy’s brief hesitation, before he looks Coulson dead in the eye and grins widely, slicking his hair back.

 

“Physics, room three-oh-four?”

 

“Yes,” Coulson says, crossing his arms, displeased at the continued interruption in his precious lesson.

 

“Great. Name’s Tony, Tony Stark.”

 

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Stark,” Coulson grits out, “what would you like, a damned medal? Why are you disrupting my class?”

 

“No need to get your panties in a bunch, Mister…” Tony glances down at the paper in his hand, then at the board, before continuing, “Coulson. I’ll just find a desk, you keep on explaining kinematics, I’ll catch up.”

 

Another round of amused whispers spread through the room as Coulson stands and watches, stunned and fuming at being taunted in front of the entire class, as Tony saunters through the room to an empty desk in the corner, settling down with an exaggerated sigh as he slides his leather jacket off his shoulders and leans back in the seat, promptly closing his eyes. Apparently deciding that this new delinquent is less worth his time than teaching the rest of his lesson, Coulson just shakes his head and returns to explaining the mess of symbols on the board, and Steve resumes his half-assed notetaking, quickly falling into a Physics-induced pit of exhaustion and giving up, instead absorbing himself in doodling along the margins of his notebook until the bell rings.

 

Relieved to be free of the lecture, Steve gathers his things and leaves in no great hurry, heading down the hall and hooking a right to stop in front of the fourth locker down, waiting for Peggy to find her way over from whatever torture she’d been subjected to at eight o’clock in the morning. He’s not there long before she turns the corner, her bag slung over one shoulder. She cracks a little smile when she sees him standing there, weaving through the busy hallway to stand in front of him.

 

“Morning, Peg,” he greets her with a smile, “how was first?”

 

“Not bad,” she answers with a smile, “I have chemistry with that new guy. He’s nervous, it’s entertaining.”

 

She opens the locker and exchanges the textbook in her arms for a thin notebook, shutting it with her shoulder to lean against it, looking at Steve.

 

“How was Coulson?”

 

“Boring. What do you have next?”

 

“English, with the old hag. Art?”

 

“Third. I have gym.”

 

“Sounds like fun.”

 

“Coach likes me, he’s not that bad.”

 

“He is if you have tits and look older than thirteen.”

 

They leave her locker behind and continue on their way towards the other side of the school, where the gymnasium lies.

 

“You should get to class,” Steve tells her once they reach its open doors.

 

“See you later?”

 

He nods, and she smiles, stretching up onto her tip-toes to kiss him on the cheek before turning and disappearing down the hall right as two boys push through the crowd towards the gym.

 

“Rogers! Coming to practice today?”

 

One of them claps him on the shoulder as they draw even.

 

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

His teammates pass him on their way to the locker room, shoving each other on the way in. Steve stays a few steps behind them, the reminder of another season weighing heavy on him. Football has always been an escape to him, the field welcoming his anxious energy and letting him turn it into sweat. This year, though, the pressure is on to get scouted and make a college team for a scholarship, and competition is tight between the guys on the team, turning the locker room into a battleground of insults and one-ups. Steve’s kept his head down the past three years, and it’s done him well, affording him protection from too much scrutiny. He just hopes he can do the same thing and make it out this year unscathed.

 

One long game of dodgeball and a quick shower later, Steve leaves the gym behind and heads to the art room, eager for the day to be done with already. He spends the class with his chin to his chest, working away on a sketch he’d started the day before. After that, it’s onwards to the science wing, where he suffers through a chemistry lesson that he only barely understands, before it’s finally time for lunch.

 

His usual table is half-full when he gets there, the rest of the team presumably off somewhere with their girlfriends or ditching to go off and smoke. One person sticks out from the crowd of letterman jackets - the kid from Coulson’s class, hunched over a paper. Steve sits, plopping his lunch on the table in front of him, and pretends the dark-haired boy to his left doesn’t exist, instead greeting the rest of the guys before digging in. From what he gathers through the conversation going on around him, Tony’s doing homework for the guys in Physics, because he’s the only one in the class that understood what Coulson was going on about. Steve thinks about his notes, half-finished and mostly doodles, and briefly debates handing over his own homework, but decides against it after a moment.

 

“So, who do you guys think Coach is gonna pick?”

 

“Huh?”

 

Steve looks up, swallowing his mouthful of lunch.

 

“For captain.”

 

Tony’s looking up from the sheet in front of him. He meets Steve’s eyes and flashes him a quick smile before turning his attention back down to the equation he’s writing out.

 

“Rogers, you think you’re in the running?”

 

“I dunno,” he says after a moment, looking back around the table, “it’s probably gonna be Marcus.”

 

“You think?”

 

Marcus straightens up with a cocky grin, pride dripping from his voice. There’s nobody else Coach would pick for the job - he’s been holding the obvious lead since freshman year, and would beat the pulp out of anyone that tried to take it from him.

 

“Yeah, ‘course it’s gonna be you,” supplies his longtime crony, Drew, elbowing him, “you’re gonna get all the ladies.”

 

Marcus snorts.

 

“I don’t need help with that.”

 

The conversation continues on, dipping back towards the topic of summer hook-ups. Smartly, Steve keeps quiet, finishing his lunch and watching Tony out of the corner of his eye. He figures it’s a temporary arrangement, only lasting as long as it takes for him to get tired of being the homework slave to the jocks before he has to find a new table to sit at. Regardless of the situation, it’s probably no use even thinking about. If anything, Tony’ll probably be gone before long, moved on to a set of friends that aren’t dick-centered douches. He appreciates the irony in that thought - when he’d first joined the team, Peggy had given him three months tops before he gave up on the whole thing, repelled by the quite frankly repulsive personalities of most of the guys on the team, but he’d somehow stuck with it, and now here he is.

 

“I gotta go find Peggy,” he interjects as soon as his tray is empty, ignoring a round of wolf whistles as he stands and leaves the cafeteria behind, heading for the library.

 

The rest of the day passes in the same relative monotony, and by the time the bell rings to signal the end of the day, Steve’s about as far from excited for the first practice of the season as it’s possible to be. Of course, he’ll probably be relegated mostly to harassing freshman recruits, which he’s not too keen on, but it’s much better than getting shoved around and tripped out on the field whenever Coach isn’t looking. Practice starts around an hour after the bell, a time that most of the team spends either smoking or hanging around the locker room, but Steve isn’t a fan of either, so he heads for the parking lot, navigating the sea of people and cars to find Peggy, leaning against her car with a book in one hand.

 

“Hey,” he calls out as he approaches.

 

“Hey, Steve.”

 

They get into her car without much further conversation, exchanging a few pleasantries about classes and whatnot as they sit in traffic and wait to leave the lot, then falling into comfortable silence on their way to Steve’s house. It’s the closer of the two to the school, so they spend the hour there, pouring over his physics homework as Peggy diligently explains the equation to him, writing out the steps in her neat hand. By the time he has to head back, he’s got a pretty decent understanding of the whole thing, and more importantly, all of his homework is finished. A little bit of pride swells in him as he shoves it into his bag, that out of all the hotheads on the team, he’s the only one not relying on some greasy new kid to get his work done. It’s gone by the time he makes it into the locker room and finds Marcus and the rest of them shoving around some shrimpy freshman. The reminder of his first day on the team is sour enough to dispel his good mood entirely.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few weeks, Tony becomes a familiar sight at the team’s table, always working busily on whatever homework assignment someone had forgotten (or neglected) to do. Steve doesn’t think much of it. In fact, he almost respects the endeavor. Tony saw an opportunity to line himself up with the right people and took it, which is exactly what Steve did when he arrived to the school, tiny, weak, and the victim of more than a few nasty rumors. Tony’s probably just trying to avoid the latter, so Steve just lets him be, figuring the shit the other guys give him is enough, well worth the pride of his reputation protection should anyone presume him to be anything more than the football team’s homework bitch.

 

Of course, that’s exactly what the team does to him in the locker room after practice, making flowery assumptions about his life and exactly why he moved to a new school three days into senior year. A sex scandal with some young teacher is the current winner, but the fact that he dresses like a fag and therefore must be one is a close second. Steve keeps his silence as usual, enduring the word as it flies across the showers, surrounded by laughs and jokes about his probable untimely death by some horrific disease. It’s nothing he isn’t used to, but it still unsettles him all the same, making him doubly thankful for Peggy’s performance as his girlfriend in the public eye.

 

The locker room talk is just that, though. To his face, they’re about as polite as a horde of high school jocks are capable of being, which is to say they give him a relatively minimal amount of shit. He grins and bears it, as anyone in his position would if they wanted to keep their precarious hold on the social scene of the school.

 

“Tony, you almost done with that? I got somethin’ else for ya.”

 

He says nothing, only continuing his work on the physics problem he’s neck-deep in unraveling. Marcus takes a minute to fold his own paper into a rudimentary airplane, then tosses it at Tony’s head, hooting with laughter when it hits its target dead-on. Tony glances up long enough to find Steve looking at him, and flashes him the same crooked grin before grabbing the airplane and flattening it out on the table, scanning its contents.

 

“So, Steve,” Drew starts in the type of tone that automatically sets him on edge, “how’s Peggy?”

 

“She’s-”

 

He doesn’t wait for Steve to get more than half a word out before talking over him again.

 

“Is the sex good? I mean, I was thinkin’ it would be, ‘cos she’s got a great ass.”

 

Steve gapes at him, trying to find the right words to say, something to turn the subject without making it seem like he’s avoiding the question. He can feel his face going red, heat rising in his cheeks the longer he goes without finding something to say.

 

“Wait, don’t tell me you haven’t done it yet!”

 

Marcus hoots with laughter again, slapping a hand down on the table.

 

“What are you, a fag? Have you even kissed her?”

 

“What did you just say?”

 

Tony’s voice startles Steve enough for him to nearly give himself whiplash turning to stare at him, wide-eyed. He was staring down the table at Marcus, who’d gone silent and serious the second he spoke up.

 

“I asked if Rogers was a fag,” he says, standing up, “you got a fuckin’ problem with that?”

 

Tony stands up as well, the size difference between him and Marcus almost laughable if the tension wasn’t thick enough to cut.

 

“Yeah, I got a problem with it,” he says, watching Marcus step around the table towards him cooly, “how is that your fuckin’ business?”

 

“I got a right to know if I’m on a team with a faggot,” Marcus hisses, glaring daggers at the smaller boy.

 

Steve is frozen, hands clenched tight into fists, terrified the anger is about to turn on him any second. He’s about to say something in an attempt to dispel the tension and get Tony out of harm’s way when there’s a burst of movement and an angry shout. It happens so fast he almost misses Tony’s lunge forward, but the crack of bone on bone is unmistakable. Marcus drops like a stone, yelling and holding his nose. The entire team just stares, the cafeteria the closest to silent Steve has ever heard it. Everyone is looking on in disbelief as Tony turns on his heel and walks straight out of the doors, leaving Marcus cursing on the ground behind him.

 

* * *

 

“I heard about what happened with the new kid.”

 

Steve looks up from his notebook sharply, finding Peggy looking at him with an odd expression on her face.

 

“He’s got balls, dropping Marcus in front of everyone like that.”

 

Not sure what he should say or how much she knows, Steve just nods mutely, looking back down at his homework.

 

“Why’d he do it?”

 

Steve looks up again. He lifts a shoulder in a shrug, doing his best to sound casual.

 

“Marcus said something he didn’t like, I guess?”

 

Peggy narrows her eyes, regarding him suspiciously.

 

“Said what, exactly?”

 

“I dunno, Pegs. It’s not important.”

 

“I wouldn’t say that. Marcus is pretty mad, Steve.”

 

Steve sighs, putting down his pen, seeing no way out of Peggy’s questioning.

 

“He called me a fag, alright?”

 

Instantly, her voice goes cold.

 

“Marcus did?”

 

He nods hesitantly, and Peggy sighs.

 

“Why?”

 

“What do you mean, why?”

 

“Why did he call you that?”

 

Uneasy, Steve shifts his weight on the stool, not exactly eager to tell her it was because he didn’t respond quick enough when they asked him about how she is in the sack.

 

“No reason,” he mumbles, looking back down at his homework, hoping she’ll let it go.

 

“Steve…”

 

The warning is clear on her voice. _You need to be careful_ , she’s saying, chiding him for letting someone so much as think that about him.

 

“I know.”

 

He tries to be firm, wanting the conversation to end there, and thankfully, Peggy lets him leave it at that. They sit in silence for a few long minutes as Steve stares at his homework, the words on the page suddenly making zero sense.

 

“I should probably get you to practice.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Steve shoves the paper into his bag, telling himself he’ll finish it later. Peggy follows him out to the car, not saying anything until the engine rumbles to life.

 

“What are you going to say?”

 

“About what?”

 

Frustrated with his avoidance, Peggy sighs and looks at him the same way she always does when he’s not taking something as seriously as she thinks he should be.

 

“What do you think?”

 

“I’ll do the same thing I always do.”

 

“And that is..?”

 

“Agree with whatever Marcus says. He’s too stupid to think anything of it, Pegs. I’ll be fine, I promise.”

 

She doesn’t say anything after that. They drive to the school, going past their usual spot and right up towards the door to the gym, where a few guys from the team are standing around, smoking.

 

“Kiss me,” she orders, leaning across the car to grab the front of Steve’s shirt and yank him towards her. It’s only marginally awkward, the weird sense that it’s definitely _not_ right enveloping both of them for as long as it takes for Steve to hear the hooting and cheering from outside the car to start.

 

“Thanks,” he mutters when they break apart, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand to get rid of her lipstick.

 

“I’ll see you after practice.”

 

“Yeah. See you later, Pegs.”

 

He gets out of the car and waves to her, watching her cruise back out of the lot and onwards to wherever she was headed before turning around.

 

“Guess you’re not a fag after all, huh, Rogers?”

 

Johnny claps him on the shoulder, offering him the half-smoked cigarette between his fingers. Steve waves it away with a grin, forcing himself to not cringe as he’s surrounded by the smell of acrid smoke and sweat.

 

“Guess not.”

 

“Man, she’s cold. You’re a lucky guy, Steve.”

 

He doesn’t say anything, only giving Johnny a look that would suggest he’s well aware of how lucky he is to have a girlfriend on the cheer team, as if half the team hasn’t been with half the other girls on the team and they could only hope. They stand around and shoot shit for a little, waiting for Coach to come out and shout at them to get their asses into the locker room before he hands them to them himself, as always. Right as they boys are finishing up their smokes, a car roars into the lot, tires squealing obnoxiously. _Marcus_. He pulls up to the gym and parks to a chorus of cheering and raucous applause, which Steve joins in on only out of necessity, nerves starting to tangle in his stomach. He hadn’t expected him to be here, only hours after Tony had broken his nose in front of the whole school, but here he is, getting out of his car with two black eyes and a swollen, messed-up face. Steve is almost impressed with how good a number Tony did on him, until he remembers that even mildly seeming like he doesn’t want to murder the guy would be a death sentence right about now.

 

Johnny lets out a low whistle as Marcus approaches, a scowl on his face. Everyone falls silent, staring at their previously-infallible leader, wondering how their little homework bitch had managed to fuck him up this bad. Without saying a word, Marcus storms right into the gym, and as if pulled by a magnet, the group follows him into the locker rooms. As soon as the door swings open and they walk in, the rest of the team falls silent, looking at Marcus with the same awe/fear combination. After a few seconds of it, Drew finally pipes up.

 

“So, we’re gonna fuck this kid up, right?”

 

A round of murmurs passes around the room, all in agreement that Tony’s in desperate need of some solid retribution.

 

“I say we catch him in the lot after school,” says Pat from next to Steve, sliding up to stand next to Marcus, grinding a fist into his palm, “teach him a real lesson.”

 

Marcus just nods, a slow, dangerous smile spreading on his face.

 

“Not everyone. Don’t wanna make a scene,” he says, after a moment of consideration, waiting for the hubbub that starts up to quiet before continuing, “Johnny, Drew, Pat, we’ll get it done good enough.”

 

The three named boys nod excitedly, the promise of tenderizing some fresh meat lighting up their eyes.

 

“When?”

 

“Friday,” Marcus answers, a grin on his face, weirdly contorted with how swollen his nose is. His three cronies nod and repeat _friday_ amongst themselves.

 

Just then, the door swings open behind Steve, and the chatter once again quiets. He steps to the side, letting Coach pass him by into the center of the room, scanning the crowd. It takes him a moment to find Marcus, and when he does, he stops dead, staring at his face with an almost amused sort of look.

 

“Kid really did a number on ya, huh?”

 

“It’s nothing, Coach.”

 

“Better be. We have a game next week, and I don’t plan on benching our best quarterback for it.”

 

He turns, addressing the team as a whole. Steve tunes out the lecture about their homecoming game and how important it is. He’s heard it three times already, and the same pep talk calling them a bunch of pussies isn’t going to inspire him any more this year than it has before. Thankfully, it’s over relatively quickly, and Steve manages to get changed and out to the field without much more trouble, only a few half-friendly shoves from his teammates. Practice goes well, despite Marcus’s constant vowing to kill Tony for fucking up his face, and the occasional taunt aimed at Steve. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, so he just pretends he doesn’t hear it as always and makes it through the afternoon unscathed. The team showers, changes, and then finally disperses.

 

Peggy’s waiting for him by the door when he escapes the locker room, her car idling. He climbs in, glancing back at the door long enough to catch sight of two of the juniors on the team leaving the gym, then turns back to Peggy, leaning in and kissing her on the cheek quickly.

 

“How’d it go?”

 

She pulls out of the lot and starts towards home.

 

“Okay. The guys are planning on smacking the crap out of Tony.”

 

“That’s to be expected.”

 

“Yeah, I guess.”

 

Something about the way he says it must’ve aroused her suspicion, because she glances at him in that same nagging way that scolds him without her even opening her mouth.

 

“You’re not helping them, are you?”

 

“God, no! Just Marcus and his cronies.”

 

“Good.”

 

The conversation stalls for a moment, as Steve considers the idea that’s been on the edge of his thoughts throughout the practice.

 

“I think I’m going to tell him.”

 

“You’re _what_?!”

 

Peggy very nearly slams on the brakes, the car stuttering and slowing briefly.

 

“You can’t, Steve. Absolutely not.”

 

“Come on, Pegs, I can’t just sit there and let him walk into a death sentence! You know what they did to that kid they caught under the bleachers last year!”

 

The reminder of his face, broken and bloody and barely conscious, as he was loaded into the ambulance is a stone-cold reminder of the very real danger he’s putting himself in by even considering warning Tony of Marcus’s plans. Still, the urge to warn Tony to keep himself out of harm’s way until the blood cools won’t go away.

 

“That’s exactly why you can’t! That could be you!”

 

“It could be him.”

 

Frustrated, Peggy just parks the car and says nothing, staring angrily out of the driver’s side window. Steve gets the feeling she’s not going to bother arguing with him anymore, so he gets out of the car and walks inside, slamming the front door a bit harder than necessary. The house is dark, his mom presumably off at work already, so he goes straight for his room, not in the mood to do much else besides blast music from the little radio Peggy had gotten him for Christmas the year before and lay in his bed, trying to figure out how to go about warning Tony.

 

* * *

 

Steve does his best to look nonchalant as he leans against Tony’s car, his arms crossed over his chest in an effort to keep him from fiddling. Finding the car had been the easy part - he’d seen Tony driving away in the thing, bright red and with its top down so the whole school can hear his obnoxious rock blare out of the parking lot. Waiting is the hard part. The longer he stands there, waiting for Tony, the more nervous he gets. Finally, the bell rings, and people start leaving the school, heading in groups for their cars. He stares at the ground, praying to God that none of the football guys decide to ditch practice that day and end up seeing him waiting next to Tony’s car and decide to kill two birds with one stone. Right as he’s about to psych himself out and go find Peggy’s car, he looks up at the doors quickly and his heart damn near stops dead in his chest. Tony’s making his way through the sea of people pouring out of the doors, in all his leather jacketed, mirrored aviator-wearing, slicked hair-having glory.

 

He catches sight of Steve as he’s halfway across the lot, his step slowing. Almost nervously, he approaches the car, and Steve can immediately tell he’s worried.

 

“Fancy seein’ you here,” he says, shooting Steve his trademark toothy grin, “come to kick my ass in honor of Bullwinkle? Seems a little ass-backwards if you ask me, seeing as I decked him for you and all.”

 

Steve pointedly ignores the _for you_. If anything, Tony’s just a smooth talker, trying to worm his way out of whatever situation he thinks he’s in.

 

“No, Bullwinkle wants to do that himself.”

 

Tony winces, opening the back door and tossing his bag into the car, shutting it before leaning cooly against the car, looking at Steve.

 

“Then to what do I owe the honor of...?”

 

He gestures at Steve, who swallows hard and tries to keep his composure together. The longer he spends standing here, the riskier it gets.

 

“They’re planning on getting you here tomorrow. Figured I’d give you a heads-up.”

 

“Tomorrow, huh? When?”

 

“After school. If I were you, I’d make myself pretty scarce.”

 

Tony nods, pushing himself off the car.

 

“Well, in that case, thanks for the warning. I’d better bounce.”

 

Steve clears his throat and steps away from the car.

 

“Catch you later, Ponyboy.”

 

With that, Tony climbs into the car, starts it, and drives away in a rush of guitar and drums from his stereo. Steve lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and turns, heading for where Peggy’s waiting for him on the other side of the lot. Halfway there, he’s stopped by a shout.

 

“Hey, Rogers!”

 

Johnny and Drew are ambling towards him, matching shit-eating grins on their faces.

 

“What was that about?”

 

Steve shrugs, pasting a grin on his own face, forcing out the line he’d been rehearsing all day in case this happened.

 

“What, I can’t get in on the action a little?”

 

“Don’t scare him off, dude.”

 

“Relax, I didn’t. Just gave him a little talking-to. He doesn’t see a thing coming.”

 

Johnny rubs his hands together, excited by the prospect of what exactly Tony _has_ coming.

 

“Alright, man, just leave the rest of it to us.”

 

“I plan on it.”

 

“Hey, you hear about the party tonight?”

 

“No? What party?”

 

“Aw man, Marcus is throwing a rager. You should come, the whole team’ll be there. Bring your girl, too!”

 

Steve ignores the fact that he’s clearly an afterthought in the invitation and nods.

 

“Sure thing. See you there.”

 

The two of them continue on their way, evidently satisfied. Relieved, Steve continues on his way to Peggy’s car, sliding into the passenger seat with a sigh.

 

“You did it.”

 

It’s not a question, and she’s most definitely not pleased.

 

“And got away with it.”

 

Peggy sighs, starting the car.

 

“You really do need to be careful, Steve.”

 

“I know.”

  



	2. it was inevitable, you see

Peggy’s gotten lost somewhere in the crowd. Steve cranes his neck trying to find her, but in the half-lit, crowded kitchen, he can’t see much of anything. Slowly but surely, he works his way through the mass of drunk teenagers and emerges into the living room, which is much the same except for a few couples on the couch making out. He sighs and takes a sip of his beer, already regretting his decision to avoid drinking more than a cup of the watered-down stuff. It was too risky, he and Peggy had decided, since he was on thin ice with the team and the last thing he needed was to start a fight like the last time he’d gotten drunk at a party. In his defense, parties aren’t exactly his scene, and funnily enough, as it turns out, the rest of his team (and probably the majority of the school) would agree. Steve sighs, empties the cup, and is courteous enough to find a garbage bin before continuing on his search. The rest of the house, he soon finds out, is just as Peggy-less, so he moves on to the backyard, hoping he won’t have to poke through rooms of raunchy behavior upstairs to try and find her. 

 

He makes it all the way outside without issue before he’s stopped by a hand on his shoulder, turning him around rather roughly.

 

“Rogers, look’t you, all dressed up,” slurs Tony, his breath reeking of something stronger than beer.

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

Steve grabs his wrist and yanks him a few feet away from the door, into a pool of shadow where he’s less likely to be spotted by anyone that currently wants him dead.

 

“Came to party,” he mumbles, taking a step closer to Steve, grinning widely.

 

“They’ll kill you if they get the chance!”

 

Sagely, Tony nods, taking a sip from the cup in his other hand, apparently understanding Steve’s panicked vagueness and not caring.

 

“Let ‘em try, boss, I’ll get ‘em!”

 

“You’re not  _ getting _ anyone, Tony. They’re twice your size.”

 

Distantly, he realizes he sounds almost exactly like Peggy trying to talk him down from a fight, and smiles a little. Tony shakes his wrist free from Steve’s grip and takes another swig of his drink, tossing the empty cup to the ground and leaning in closer. 

 

“Whaddya say we get outta here, then?”

 

_ He’s just drunk _ , Steve reminds himself, stepping back from Tony’s advances as nerves start to make his stomach twist,  _ he shouldn’t drive himself home _ .

 

“I gotta tell Peggy I’m leaving,” he mutters, telling himself that driving Tony home is the right thing to do and any sane person with a heart would do it, “don’t go anywhere, okay?”

 

Tony nods and Steve sighs and walks back towards the house, checking to make sure he’s really staying put before he plunges back into the house to find Peggy. He scans the living room, then moves to the kitchen, and finally on to the dining room before he finds her, tucked into a corner of the room talking to a redhead that Steve recognizes from the cheer team. He weaves through the crowd to get to her, touching her shoulder to get her attention. She turns, smiling apologetically at the redhead before stepping away so the two of them can talk. 

 

“Tony’s here,” Steve says into her ear, low enough that only she’ll hear.

 

“ _ What _ ? Doesn’t he know that Marcus will have his head if he finds out?”

 

He shrugs, frowning.

 

“I’m going to drive him home.”

 

“You can’t leave with him, Steve.”

 

“So walk me out.”

 

Peggy sighs, kissing his cheek before grabbing his hand and leading him out of the room, apparently much to the amusement of a pack of Marcus’s cronies that had been watching them from the doorway. She leads him through the front door and down into the street with an iron grip, ignoring his quiet protests that he has to go find Tony. By force, she drags him over to her car, parked well out of immediate sight of anyone inside the house, before dropping his hand and rounding on him, glaring daggers.

 

“You can’t do this, Steve!”

 

“Do what?”

 

“Forget where the hell you are!”

 

“Peggy, what are you talking about?”

 

She sighs, crossing her arms over her chest and looking away.

 

“There are rumors, you know.”

 

Steve realizes what she’s saying, and how thin the razor’s edge he’s balancing on really is.

 

“They’re saying all sorts of things after what happened with the new kid,” she says, looking back at him, the fear for him clear in her eyes, “you have to be so careful.”

 

“I am being careful.”

 

“Meaning, you shouldn’t be seen around him.”

 

“I’m just driving him home, Pegs. He’s drunk.”

 

“That’s his own fault! Don’t make it your problem. You know what’s at stake.”

 

“Nobody has to know.”

 

“Steve,” she warns, about to say something else when the sound of a car rumbling to life not too far away makes them both turn. 

 

It’s Tony’s, the bright red a beacon even in the dark. Steve sets off towards it at a near run, unwilling to let him just drive away, Peggy hot on his heels and protesting. The car doesn’t move before he gets to the driver’s side window, which rolls down at his approach, Peggy pulling up short a few feet away. Tony’s sitting in the front seat with his arms crossed, glaring at the steering wheel. 

 

“Let me drive you,” Steve says through the window, one hand resting on the door’s handle.

 

“Your girlfriend doesn’t seem too happy,” Tony tells the wheel, not looking up, “you should go with her.”

 

“Tony-”

 

He’s cut off by a sudden blast of rock music. The car starts backing up, and Steve is forced to jog to keep up with the window.

 

“Come on, don’t be like this!”

 

In order to be heard, he has to shout. Tony doesn’t acknowledge him either way, backing out of the driveway he’s parked in like Steve doesn’t even exist. Helplessly, he watches him speed off, the music following him down the street before fading away. Steve, standing in the middle of the road, watches him go with a strange feeling in his stomach, close to guilt but not quite. After a minute or so, Peggy comes up next to him, touching his arm softly.

 

“Let’s go home, Steve.”

 

* * *

 

Come Wednesday, Tony still hasn’t shown up at school, and the football team is getting antsy. Steve’s in the already-mostly-vacated locker room, cleaning up after practice, when Marcus storms back in in all his bruised, broken-nosed glory, absolutely fuming. Steve tries to make himself as small as possible, ducking his head to his chest and staring into his bag. Unfortunately, he’s not that lucky. Marcus shoves him sideways, nearly toppling him, but he catches himself and looks up, trying to decide whether or not it would make things worse to defend himself.

 

“What the fuck, Rogers? You warn your boyfriend and tell him to get outta town?”

 

“No? Marcus-”

 

He’s shoved backwards this time, colliding hard with the lockers behind him. Marcus gets in his face, one hand curled into a fist.

 

“You wanna pass on the lesson for me, huh? How ‘bout I teach you so he really gets it?”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Steve spits, desperate to escape unharmed.

 

“Saw them talking last week,” Drew chips in, sidling up to Marcus wearing a smirk, “you think he tipped him off?”

 

“That true, Rogers?”

 

“I didn’t say shit to him, I swear.”

 

“You believe him, Marcus?”

 

Drew’s stirring the pot, clearly wanting a fight. Steve’s paralyzed, well aware of the position he’s put himself in and how hard Marcus can hit when it comes down to it. Panic sparks in his chest, making him want to tuck tail and run, but he’s cornered.

 

“I’m telling the truth, I-”

 

He’s cut off by a fist slamming into his face hard enough to nearly drop him, the pure shock keeping him standing against the lockers.

 

“You’re lucky we need you for the game,” Marcus hisses, leaning in close, “tell the fag that if I ever get wind of him thinking he’s hot shit again they’ll have to wheel you and him outta here in a stretcher. Got it?”

 

Mute, pain radiating from his cheek, Steve just nods, standing frozen until Marcus and Drew clear out of the room, leaving him with a few of the younger members. None of them are looking at him, no doubt scared into submission by the show. There will be jokes later, but Steve isn’t half as worried about that as he is about the fact that Marcus  _ knows _ he told Tony, just like he probably knows all sorts of things about Steve he shouldn’t. He’s sick to his stomach as he shoves the rest of his belongings into his bag and gets the fuck out of there, only briefly hesitating before he opens the door leading outside. Peggy’s going to lose it when she sees him - there’s no doubt at least some evidence of the blow already appearing. He’ll have a nasty bruise by tomorrow, if the throbbing is anything to go by. There’s no way around that. Resigning himself to the anticipated fit she’ll throw the second she sees him, Steve opens the door and walks outside, hoisting his bag higher on his shoulder. Her car is sitting a little ways away, and he can tell from where he’s standing that she hasn’t seen him yet, her nose buried in a book. 

 

By the time he makes it to the car, she still hasn’t looked up. He braces himself before opening the door, managing to slide into the seat and shut it before Peggy catches sight of his face.

 

“Holy shit, are you okay?”

 

Immediately, she’s manhandling him, turning his face this way and that while inspecting him, careful fingers prodding at where he was hit. He winces and waves her away (unsuccessfully), doing his best to appear casual about it, like he hadn’t just been punched on the assumption that Tony will be more affected by his injury than one of his own. 

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“No you’re not, who did this?”

 

He doesn’t say anything, not exactly keen on the speech about  _ being careful _ and  _ not letting them suspect anything _ that he’d already heard a billion times since freshman year. 

 

“ _ Steve _ .” 

 

“I’m  _ fine _ . Can we go?”

 

“Not until you tell me what happened.”

 

“Marcus punched me. Happy?”

 

“Why?”

 

Peggy’s more demanding than asking, so Steve sighs, leans back in his seat, and avoids her sharp eyes.

 

“Because they know I told Tony about their plan.”

 

“You did.”

 

“Yeah, I did.”

 

She starts the car.

 

“I told you it was a bad idea.”

 

“I’ll deal with it, okay? Don’t worry.”

 

“You have to be-”

 

“-Careful. I know.”

 

A hand touches Steve’s arm, and he looks over to find Peggy frowning, looking at the mark on his face. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at him for a moment, as stormy and unreadable as ever, before pulling out of the parking lot, starting the drive to Steve’s house. When they get there, it’s dark and empty as usual, but they quickly fill it with crackling music from his radio and smells from the lasagna his mother had left them to make. By the time night comes knocking, the music has been turned off and the oven’s gone cold, and Peggy is standing over Steve keeping an ice pack to his face by force, ignoring his protests. She’s already checked it for a fracture and made him ice it twice, so the routine of him trying to dodge the cold is nothing new. He’s trapped under her on the couch when she finally relents, standing up and straightening her skirt, then her hair, before putting the ice pack back in its rightful place in the freezer.

 

Steve stands up as well, doing his best to regain all lost dignity by running a hand through his hair and touching his cheek softly, wincing at the soreness. It’ll definitely be one hell of a shiner, despite all of Peggy’s efforts. 

 

“Do you think Tony’s okay?”

 

“For the hundredth time, Steve,  _ yes _ , he’s probably fine.”

 

“I mean, he hasn’t been at school since Thursday…”

 

“Since you warned him about Marcus and those assholes? I wouldn’t come to school either.”

 

“Since he drove away at the party,” Steve corrects her, frowning, “I just hope he’s not hurt or anything.”

 

“You know what? We’re going on an adventure.”

 

“What? Peggy-”

 

She grabs his hand and, stopping only to turn off all the lights and lock the front door, marches him outside and straight to her car, once again ignoring his weak protests.

 

“It’s like nine o’clock, where are we going?”

 

“Get in, you’ll see.”

 

He knows better than to try and fight her. Judging by the past hour of his life, she’ll have absolutely no problem beating him into submission in any situation, ice pack or forced adventure or otherwise. So, Steve gets into her car, dutifully buckling his seatbelt and refraining from asking where they’re going until they’re actually driving.

 

“Am I allowed to know where we’re going now?”

 

“I said you’ll see.”

 

Knowing he won’t get much more in ways of an answer, Steve sits back and watches the world pass by his window as they drive in silence. Before long, they make a turn out of town, up into the hills where the driveways get longer and the houses bigger. The further they go, the more confused Steve gets. He’s about to voice said confusion when Peggy pulls over in front of the biggest house they’ve passed so far, turning the car off.

 

“Where are we?”

 

“You’ve been moping about Tony all week,” she starts, turning to look at him with a little smile, “so I asked around, and turns out, he’s staying here with his aunt, and has been home sick all week.”

 

Steve looks at her, mildly dumbfounded. 

 

“Let me get this straight. You brought me to Tony’s house, less than five hours after I got punched in the face because of him  _ and _ you yelling at me for an hour because he’s too risky to be around?”

 

“Well, being punched was a non-factor. Quite honestly, Steve, I got sick of you whining about him and telling you things you won’t listen to is tiring, so here we are.”

 

“Thanks, I guess?”

 

She nods, as if to say  _ don’t mention it, just being a good girlfriend like anyone would _ and looks towards the front door.

 

“Are you just going to sit here all night?”

 

“You’re seriously expecting me to just go knock on his door? And say what, sorry for pissing you off last week but I just got punched thanks to you and hey, speaking of which, you’re safe for the time being so you should stop skipping school?”

 

“Yes, precisely. Unless you need me to do it for you, in which case I’m perfectly happy to if it means you’ll stop pining after him.”

 

“I’m not pining!”

 

The look she gives him shuts him up immediately. Steve looks back up to the door, sitting calmly across the street and up the winding driveway. 

 

“ _ Go _ , Steve. I’ll wait here.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Positive. Now go, before I drag you out of the car by the ear, mister.”

 

Peggy gives him a little shove, and, knowing full well that any more waiting would result in escalating physical violence, Steve gets out of the car. He looks back at her nervously and gets an encouraging smile in return, then starts the journey up the driveway. It’s long enough to give him time to think about what the hell he’s going to say or how he’s going to explain just showing up at Tony’s house at nine o’clock at night, but short enough that he’s come up with jack shit by the time he reaches the door. He hesitates there, wondering if he would be better off walking away now and never talking to (or thinking about) Tony again. Surely it would cause far less problems than doing this would, especially counting the threat of retribution from Marcus and the rest of the team if they catch wind of it. He’s about to turn around and go back the way he came when he remembers cornering Tony at Marcus’s party and the way he’d smiled like he could read Steve like an open book and was inviting him to get a little closer, almost daring him to. That alone is enough to get him to knock on the door, stepping back and trying not to look terrified as he waits for someone to answer it. 

 

After an uncomfortably long time, the door swings open. A middle-aged woman wearing an apron and holding a wooden spoon almost threateningly stares Steve down, resembling Tony in expression so uncannily it startles him for a moment. He clears his throat nervously, faltering for a second before he finds his voice.

 

“Hi, um, is Tony around..?”

 

Immediately, she brightens, offering up a warm smile.

 

“Are you one of his friends from school? I’ll get him down for you, come inside, dear.”

 

She waves him into the house and hurries off, disappearing through a doorway before shouting for Tony. There’s a crash from upstairs, followed by a muffled curse that’s unmistakably his, and the woman (his aunt, Steve guesses) comes back into view. She smiles again and disappears through another doorway, presumably going back to whatever she was doing before he knocked. A minute or so later, Tony rounds the corner, stopping dead in his tracks as soon as he sees Steve.

 

“No.”

 

He turns on his heel and goes to walk away, and Steve steps forward, brows furrowed.

 

“Tony, wait.”

 

With a heavy  _ I don’t want to talk to you but I guess I don’t really have a choice _ sigh, he turns back around, crossing his arms and regarding Steve unhappily. He looks a right mess, with disheveled hair and dark bags under his eyes, like he hasn’t slept right in days. For a few seconds, Tony’s just glaring at him, then something clicks and his face changes from annoyed to slightly worried.

 

“The hell happened to you?”

 

Steve lifts a shoulder and gives him a half-smile, half-grimace. 

 

“You should see the other guy.”

 

It’s an outright lie, but the brief hint of a smile he gets from Tony in response is well worth it. It lasts only a second, and then he’s right back to being stone-faced, though appearing to be slightly less displeased with Steve’s presence. 

 

“We need to talk,” he says, before Tony can say anything, stepping forward again. Tony stands his ground, casting a furtive glance at the doorway through which his aunt left. 

 

“Not here,” he replies after a moment, quietly, and then he’s moving, passing Steve by and going right for the door. He stops long enough to grab his jacket from a hook beside the door and jam his feet into the boots sitting beneath it, not bothering to pull their laces.

 

“Be back later!”

 

He shouts it back into the house before taking Steve’s arm and dragging him outside, so forcefully that it instantly reminds him of Peggy. Speaking of which - she’s still sitting in her car on the side of the road, barely visible. Tony climbs in his car, and Steve stops next to his door, wavering.

 

“I should tell Peggy what’s going on,” he tells Tony, earning him a frown.

 

“Yeah. Do that.”

 

He doesn’t sound happy about it, but he doesn’t go running back inside, so Steve figures it could be worse. It takes him all of a few seconds to jog down the driveway to Peggy’s car, and is greeted by a rolled-down window and expectant eyebrows.

 

“I can get Tony to give me a ride home,” he tells her, smiling, the  _ thank you _ going unspoken but not missed, “you should get home, it’s late.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

It’s also  _ you’re welcome _ and  _ see, I told you it would be fine _ all in one. Not wanting to accidentally let the waiting  _ not really _ slip out, Steve just nods. An engine starts, and by the time he looks up, Tony’s halfway down the driveway, so he gives Peggy one last smile before meeting him at the bottom, climbing into the passenger seat with only a little hesitation. As always, his music is playing loud enough for there to be reasonable excuse for nobody to talk as they drive away from Tony’s house. For a while, Steve just looks out the window, half-listening to the loud guitars and shouted lyrics, mostly trying to figure out what exactly Tony’s game plan is. Best-case scenario: he does know, doesn’t care, and wants to thank him for saving him a beating by getting punched in the face. Worst-case: he knows, and is currently driving him out into the middle of nowhere where nobody will find his body. The thought makes him feel sick, so he pushes it out of his head and instead looks over at Tony, who’s got both hands on the steering wheel, white-knuckled. Something’s eating him, but Steve has no idea what it is. He’s not sure he should say anything, so he doesn’t.

 

Eventually, they come to a little clearing in the woods, which Tony pulls into and turns the car off. The sudden silence is somehow louder than the music was, making Steve antsy. He scrambles for something to say, anything to break the spell holding him captive there in that uncomfortable feeling, but comes up empty-handed despite his every effort. Before long, Tony interrupts his thoughts, quiet and frowning.

 

“Look, I appreciate the knight in shining armor effort, but you don’t need to swoop in and save me every time some overgrown apes want to use me as a punching bag.”

 

“Yeah, I took the bullet for you on that one,” Steve’s snapping before he can stop himself, only realizing halfway through that he sounds like an ass and softening his tone somewhat, “a thank you would’ve been nice.”

 

“Took the bullet, huh?”

 

Tony turns to look at him, eyes hovering on where Steve supposes there’s a bruise from Marcus’s fist making a brief foray into being a meat tenderizer. 

 

“I’m gonna go out on a limb, then, and take a guess that this ‘other guy’ doesn’t look too bad?”

 

Steve says nothing, just frowning and looking away, out the windshield. There isn’t much to see, since it’s pitch black out and they’re surrounded by nothing but trees. 

 

“Who hit you?”

 

The question takes him a little by surprise. 

 

“Marcus.”

 

“The one I punched?”

 

Steve nods, looking back at Tony. 

 

“Seems like a great guy.”

 

“That’s one way to put it.”

 

“Why you?”

 

“They saw me talking to you,” Steve says, bitter, “figured I deserved it more for tipping you off, I guess. He said if you tried something again they’ll go after both of us.”

 

“So, they know we’re in cahoots?”

 

“Guess so.”

 

“That doesn’t sound very safe for you.”

 

“It’s not.”

 

He points to his cheekbone, getting a little laugh from Tony that reassures Steve that he’s doing the right thing more than he’d like to admit. 

 

“Why’d you do it?”

 

“Do what?”

 

“Warn me. It would’ve been easier to just let them get it over with and stay on good terms with your ‘roid buddies. Why?”

 

“You ask a lot of questions,” Steve tells him, stalling until he can come up with an answer that isn’t  _ your face is too pretty to let them fuck up like that _ , because that’s a dangerous game to play and Steve knows it ends with his worst-case scenario turning out to be right. He’s heard enough stories.

 

“That’s not an answer,” Tony chides.

 

“It was a stupid question.”

 

“Was it your girlfriend’s idea? She seems like the bleeding-heart, bra-burning type that would go on a crusade to protect the new kid.”

 

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Steve mutters, looking away and immediately cursing himself. The last thing he needs right now is to destroy everything Peggy had built the past three years intended to keep him safe, but here he is, telling someone he doesn’t know his biggest secret.

 

“She’s not?”

 

There’s something soft in Tony’s voice that makes Steve turn back to him, startled by the gentleness of it.

 

“No,” he whispers, not sure if it’s fear or relief that’s currently flooding his stomach.

 

For a second, the world hangs in perfect balance. The two of them are just sitting there, looking at each other, two scared boys in a car in the dark in the middle of the woods, and for a breathtaking moment, the silence swallows them whole. 

 

Then, Tony bridges the gap and kisses him.


	3. icarus

It’s an incredibly odd feeling to be stuck in a little bubble where time is standing completely still while the rest of the world continues moving like there’s nothing amiss. To Steve, it’s particularly torturous when combined with the confusion surrounding all of it, his mind turning those fifteen seconds in the car over and over in his head until he’s picked apart every little detail a thousand times by the time he makes it to first period. The way Tony looked at him, like he’s putting all the pieces of a puzzle together in his head and the last one to fit into place was his lips against Steve’s. The way it made him feel, warm and terrified in a way he’s never felt before and now can’t stop feeling, even hours and hours later. The silence afterwards, tense and full of unspoken things that Steve didn’t know if there are words for or not. They’d driven home like that, with Tony’s eyes fixed firmly on the road and the intimate memory of their kiss only just starting to sink in, Steve mumbling directions to his house so quietly it’s a wonder Tony heard him at all. 

 

The worst part of it was laying in his bed afterwards, not sure if he should be smiling until his face fell off or terrified for his life, part of him screaming that all of it was some elaborate set-up to finally push him out into the open to be thrown to the wolves. He’d laid awake into the small hours of the morning, bouncing back and forth between worrying himself sick and wanting to jump out of bed and dance around his room to one of the cheesy love songs that always plays on the radio. That feeling only mildly faded come morning, and by the time he made it to school, it had twisted itself up into nervousness that fills him straight to the brim. 

 

Focusing on class was out of the question from the beginning, so Steve’s been passing his time by absentmindedly doodling in the margins of his notebook and thinking about Tony. It’s not like has much of a choice in the matter, seeing as his brain is still stuck fast on the shock that swept everything else away the second Tony kissed him out of nowhere, confirming every suspicion that he knew but doing nothing to confirm nor deny how he felt about it. All things considered, it  _ could _ be a good sign, but he hasn’t known Tony for more than a few weeks at most, and the majority of that time had been spent pretending to ignore him at the lunch table or trying to look like he wasn’t staring at him during Physics whenever Coulson’s lesson was borning, which was virtually all the time. 

 

Okay, so maybe he’s been thinking about Tony far more than he’d ever like to admit, but that doesn’t mean anything. Steve thinks about a lot of people way more frequently than he’d like without even  _ considering  _ kissing them, case in point: Marcus. Of course, just trying to logic himself out of the mental beartrap he’s somehow found himself in just gives him a headache, so Steve spends the first half of Coulson’s lesson staring straight down at his paper as he scribbles a patch of it black, pushing the pencil into the page hard enough to nearly rip it. He should really be paying attention to the lesson, but looking up means having to see people staring at his eye like they have been since he walked into school with the ugly bruise around it, spreading in shades of purple and red from his cheekbone. His mother had already thrown a fit and a half about it the second she’d seen him that morning, and besides, it was easier to just ignore the problem than to deal with it, so that’s what he’s planning on doing. So far, it’s going well enough.

 

The door opens with a creak and Coulson goes quiet mid-sentence. Steve doesn’t look up, figuring it’s some office lady coming in to give him a note saying Tony’s sick again and to excuse him from classwork until he’s well, like they’ve been doing every day this week so far, but then Coulson speaks up, and his heart stops dead in his chest.

 

“Stark,” he scoffs, all sarcastic and clearly dissatisfied with his late entrance, “what a pleasant surprise.”

 

“Not as pleasant as seeing your face this early in the morning, Phil,” Tony snarks back, and Steve can  _ hear _ the sarcastic little smile on his face, and the effort of keeping the smile off his own face meaning he digs his pencil so hard into the paper that the tip snaps off. So much for ignoring his problems. 

 

The class titters at the use of Coulson’s first name, and Steve can only imagine his red-faced fury at being disrespected yet again, but he really should be used to it by now considering they’re a ways into the year already and Tony shows no signs of taking anything he says seriously. Anything  _ anyone _ says, really, and then Steve’s realizing he’s sinking into a hole of thinking about Tony again and pulls himself out of it by force, instead focusing on smoothing the now-blunt tip of his pencil by rubbing it back and forth on the page. He listens to the hushed giggling of the class, interrupted briefly by the creak of Tony’s desk as he sits down, only silenced when Coulson clears his throat a few seconds later, barely pausing before launching right back into the lesson. 

 

If the class felt like it was crawling by before, now it feels like it might just last forever. Steve wants to look up, wants to catch Tony’s eye and smile, reassure himself that everything’s  _ fine _ , but then he remembers where they are and keeps his head down. Not the time or the place, and besides, he isn’t even sure Tony meant anything by it. For all he knows, he’s from some weird European country where that’s a normal greeting and he’s just reading way too much into the situation. That’s the most reasonable explanation, considering there’s no way anyone like him would chance something like that on a lucky guess. There’s no way Tony’s like him is what it boils down to, so he  _ really _ should stop worrying and just forget it ever happened.

 

Quickly, Steve sneaks a sideways look at Tony before he can convince himself not to (again). He’s looking right at him, all intense just like he was right before he kissed him, and as soon as he sees Steve looking, he winks, slow and salacious. Steve flushes bright red and immediately snaps his head back down to look at his paper, heart pounding in his chest.  _ Not here, not now _ . He can’t help but think about Tony kissing him all over again, how he tasted like stale whiskey and morning breath even though it was nine o’clock at night, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care, not even a little bit, because Tony’s hand was on his cheek, pulling him closer, and Steve never, ever wanted to stop. But then they did, and he couldn’t find the right words to say anything, so he just cleared his throat awkwardly and stared back at Tony, his own fear reflected back at him in his eyes for the single heartbeat it took for him to look away, back to the steering wheel.

 

They’d sat there in silence for a few minutes after that, Steve unable to get words through the thick ball of shock that he’d somehow swallowed and now couldn’t spit back up, Tony just staring off into the blackness. Then, he started the car, and without a word, started driving back towards town, the music washing over both of them and giving Steve a perfectly good excuse to stay quiet. He only had to give a few mumbled directions before they were back at his house, and before he knew it, he was nearly running inside to get away from the butterflies Tony’s goodbye smile had given him.  _ This isn’t how things are supposed to go _ , he kept thinking, and now can’t get out of his head as he hunkers down in his desk and stares at the mess of his scribblings covering the page in front of him.  _ Not here, not like this _ . 

 

Somehow, he makes it through the rest of the class without his head exploding or his bones melting into a puddle on the linoleum floor. It’s a miracle that he gets all his things together and makes it out the door before Tony, heading for his locker. He tunes out the clamor of the hallway, trying to fill his head with anything but those few seconds in Tony’s car. It takes him three tries to get the combination right, because he forgets it the first time and his hand slips the second with how fast he’s trying to spin the dial. When someone leans against the locker next to him, he’s got tunnel vision so bad on the book he’s trying to pull out from underneath a week’s worth of handouts that he just greets them automatically, assuming it’s Peggy as it always is.

 

“Hey, Pegs,” he mutters tiredly, doing his best to not knock the whole stack onto the floor.

 

“You know, normally I’d be insulted, but I’ll let you slide on it, just this once.”

 

So much for that. Tony’s voice on its own sends all the papers flying, spreading across the floor in a mini tidal wave that Steve briefly wishes would drown him, until Tony laughs and kneels down to gather them up. Bright red in the face and stammering, he helps, crumpling most of their edges in his haste to get away from the whole situation. They’re causing a scene, a few onlookers laughing behind their hands at the sight the two of them must make, Steve with his black eye and Tony in all his leather-jacket infamy. It takes only a few seconds to get everything back into his locker and slam it shut, but even that’s a few seconds too long. He grabs Tony by the sleeve and pulls, not caring who sees, only wanting to get out of their line of sight for the time being. There’s a startled noise from behind him, and something that’s undoubtedly a witty crack combined with some nickname that’s probably a reference Steve doesn’t quite get, but he isn’t paying attention enough to hear it, instead focusing on pushing his way into a dark classroom and pulling Tony in with him. The door swings shut, blocking out the hubbub from the hallway, and Steve lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and turns around.

 

“You know, if you wanna get out of here, I  _ do _ have a car. Janitor’s closets and empty classrooms feel a little juvenile, you get me?”

 

Steve just stares at him, dumbfounded.

 

“Are you flirting with me?”

 

Tony smiles, that same slow burn that he sent across the classroom earlier, and this time Steve feels the very tips of his ears flush. 

 

“Is it not obvious?”

 

Steve takes a steadying breath, wanting to push him into the wall and make him prove it’s not all a farce right then and there, but he knows better.

 

“You can’t do this.”

 

“Do what?”

 

Alright, so that’s how it’s going to be. Fine. If Steve has to play into his game to get the message across, that’s fine by him, as long as Tony understands in the end.

 

“Any of it. Talk to me.  _ Look _ at me. Not here.”

 

Tony scoffs, affronted, and takes a step forwards.

 

“What am I, your mistress?”

 

He sounds genuinely offended. Steve backtracks quickly, glancing over his shoulder at the door like he’s afraid someone might be about to pull it open and catch the two of them. 

 

“No, no, it’s not like that. Look, Tony, there’s a reason Peggy does what she does for me, okay?”

 

“You mean pretend to be your girlfriend? What, so you can keep your precious spot on the football team with all those shining characters?”

 

Steve nods, relieved he’s starting to catch on. 

 

“Doesn’t sound like a good deal, if you ask me. One, those guys don’t seem like great friend material, I mean-” he gestures at Steve’s eye, “and two, you don’t owe anyone jack shit.”

 

“People ask questions,” he starts, then sees the look on Tony’s face like he  _ gets _ it, pauses, then changes tracks, “it’s safer. It was her idea.”

 

As if that changes anything. But Tony seems to really get it this time, looking at him with a hint of a smile playing across his lips, almost taunting.

 

“Relax. Not everyone assumes two guys are fucking just ‘cuz they’re friendly.”

 

“That’s not- there are rumors, Tony. Okay? Just- please. Not here.”

 

Another step forward. Steve’s heart jumps into his throat with Tony close enough to touch. If only he could just reach out and  _ do it _ , but he’s paralyzed, staring at him with wide eyes, not sure if he should run or close the gap. 

 

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Cameron Frye. I can handle myself just fine.”

 

With that, Tony brushes by him and walks out of the classroom, leaving Steve staring at the space he’d just been occupying. Trying to shake of the feeling that he’d managed to accomplish absolutely  _ none _ of what he’d wanted to, Steve sighs and slumps against the wall, pushing his hair back from his face in an attempt to soothe the nerves currently making him feel like puking or screaming or both. 

 

Eventually, he realizes he’s supposed to be in class. Subsequently, he realizes that by now, he’s so late that he might just be better off not going at all, and plus, braving the hallways would mean risking getting caught skipping and written up - the punishment for which could be being kept as a bench-warmer during the homecoming game in two days, and that’s about the worst possible way to start out his senior year if he’s angling for a college scholarship. Steve curses himself and sinks to the floor, resigning himself to staying put in the empty classroom until the bell rings again. 

 

* * *

 

It’s been a hair over twenty-four hours and Steve is genuinely convinced he’s losing his mind. He’d spent the entirety of first period ignoring Coulson’s lecturing and sneaking glances at Tony every five seconds, telling himself it’s because he’s paranoid that Tony will be looking at him like  _ that _ again and blow his cover entirely, but really, it’s because he’s waiting for any indication he isn’t just going to pretend Steve doesn’t exist at all. Which, if he’s being truthful, is pretty much what he told him to do, but it’s not like he actually expected Tony to listen. But he didn’t look up once from whatever he was scribbling down in his notebook, not in Steve’s direction. It seemed like he was actually paying attention in class for once, from what little he could see of Tony’s scrawling handwriting from a few desks away, which is distinctly out of character and just made him all the more uncomfortable. 

 

He’s mulling over all of this as he changes as quickly as possible for gym, trying to get out of the locker room before it fills up too much and makes him claustrophobic. Steve’s pulling his shirt over his head when a group of loud voices enters the locker room. He doesn’t have to turn around to know who it is: Marcus and Johnny, and but the sound of it, they’re heading right for him.

 

“Hey, Rogers, you ready for tomorrow?”

 

Steve forces a grin and turns around.

 

“You know it,” he says, trying to sound as confident as he hopes he looks. Marcus nods, staring at him like a coyote staring down an escaped housecat. He manages to escape the conversation a few not-so-pleasant pleasantries later, and the rest of the day passes without adding much more insult to injury, so all things considered, it could be worse. 

 

Like, for example, if Tony does what he ends up doing halfway through Steve’s free period at the end of the day on Monday, which is appear out of nowhere after complete radio silence for days and lean against the table he’s covered in his books to look like he’s accomplishing something.

 

“Hey, Romeo, saw you on the field Saturday. Gotta say, you looked great out there.”

 

He says it quietly enough that nobody should hear him, almost a whisper, but Steve goes stock-still with fear anyways, distinctly remembering the expression  _ like a deer in the headlights _ and relating immensely, except the headlights are the expression on Tony’s face, cocky and daring.

 

“Tony,” he whispers, warning him to get away before someone thinks to look at them for longer than a second and see what’s really going on, namely the fact that he’s going pink in the cheeks. It’s hard to ignore the fact that he feels as though he might burst at the seams at any second - since their talk the week before, Steve had been distracted to the point of very nearly running the ball the wrong way on Saturday, only barely coming to his senses in time to score the first touchdown. 

 

“What, I’m not allowed to congratulate you on a game well played?”

 

Steve just pointedly jerks his head towards the table on the other side of the study area that’s full to the brim with his teammates, a few of which are cutting glances at them and snickering. 

 

“Ah,” Tony sighs, standing up straight.

 

“Not here,” he reminds him with as little air as possible, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

 

“Right. Well, if you wanna get out of here, I’ll be in my car waiting.”

 

He gives his now-famous smile and walks out of the library, and Steve could swear the temperature in the place drops a solid few degrees the second he’s gone. There’s a few seconds of absence of worry, in which he looks back down at his notes, now entirely uninterested in studying for his history quiz, before chairs are moving and he’s surrounded by his team.

 

“What was that about?”

 

Drew’s warning is clear.  _ You’re on thin fucking ice and you’re not making it any easier for yourself, buddy _ . On a stroke of luck, a lie pops into his head in record time.

 

“He wants to smooth things over with the team and figured I was the only one that wouldn’t beat the crap out of him for looking my way.”

 

It comes out weirdly smoothly, probably a product of his constant worrying about the what-ifs ever since he’d been reminded of the team’s no-tolerance policy for disloyalty being pounded into his skin, the remnants of which are now only coloring his cheekbone a faint yellow-green. A few of the guys share looks, like they’re silently deciding whether or not to accept the given explanation. Evidently, they decide  _ why not _ , because a few seconds later, Drew’s nodding, the unofficial leader of the pack in Marcus’s absence. 

 

“Whaddya think, should we let him?”

 

“You’re just gonna let him get away with what he did to Marcus?”

 

One of the juniors speaks up, whose name Steve probably learned at some point but doesn’t care much to recall at the moment, and gives Drew pause as he considers.

 

“You know, that’s a good point.”

 

There’s something scheming to his voice that makes Steve’s insides squirm. 

 

“Rogers, you seem to be pretty buddy-buddy with the kid. Why don’t you tell him we’ll meet up to talk things over and then we can teach him what happens when you fuck with the wrong people?”

 

He goes cold all over. There’s no way out, no way he can tell Drew he won’t do it without risking getting punched again or worse.

 

“I don’t think he’ll fall for it,” he mutters, testing the waters, and Drew pats him on the back with a confident, almost wolfish smile on his face.

 

“That’s your job. Make him fall for it.”

 

Steve can’t find words. There’s no air left in his lungs, all of it sucked out of him by the prospect of having to lure Tony into a trap like this one.

 

“Yeah,” he finally manages, “okay.”

 

“Great.”

 

A few minutes of uncomfortable chatter pass in a haze for Steve as he picks up his pen and tries to figure out where he left off copying from the book, attempting desperately to look like he’s not choking on the feeling of wanting to run as far and as fast as possible. He can only stand it for so long before he’s gathering his things, shoving them haphazardly into his bag and standing up.

 

“Going somewhere?”

 

“Yeah, I had plans to get outta here. Got better things I could be doing.”

 

Steve does his best to raise an eyebrow and allude to what they want to hear, which he knows is something lewd about Peggy that he isn’t quite willing to lie about, not unless he really, truly has to. His message gets across loud and clear, because Drew grins and a few wolf whistles follow him on his way out of the library, trying to walk slow enough to not look like he’s fleeing with his tail between his legs. As soon as he’s out of sight, though, he speeds up, keeping his head down and making for Tony’s car as fast as he (casually) can. By the time he slides into the passenger seat, his heart is pounding so fast it feels like he’s just run a marathon.

 

“You look like you saw a ghost,” Tony comments, starting the car and pulling out of his spot. 

 

“Something like that,” Steve mutters, sinking into the seat with a little frown. He  _ has _ to tell Tony. This isn’t the sort of thing you should just keep quiet about, not when there’s physical violence involved. Not when he has to be the one to make said violence possible. How does someone even go about breaking that kind of news?  _ Hey, so I know this was meant to be some sort of flirtatious offer but turns out I have to help a bunch of guys beat the crap out of you, sorry _ ? That’s certainly one hell of a greeting card.  They drive in relative quiet, Tony’s music turned down mercifully low, until they make it far enough away from the school for Steve to start relaxing. No sooner does he sit up straight and start breathing a little easier does Tony make him nearly have a heart attack again.

 

“Your ass looks great in spandex.”

 

He says it so matter-of-factly Steve almost convinces himself he imagined it, then Tony’s talking again and he starts to firmly believe he’s crossed over into some alternate dimension or fever dream because there’s simply just no way in hell this can be real.

 

“I kinda get why you like football so much. I mean, if I was surrounded by buff guys in spandex shorts that show off all kinda things, I’d be pretty damn happy too.”

 

Steve doesn’t say anything, mostly because he has no goddamn idea how to even go about responding to that, so he just sort of stares at Tony openmouthed, wondering if he’s being serious. 

 

“Anyway,” he says, shrugging off the awkward silence and glancing over at Steve, “what took you so long?”

 

“Got cornered,” he finally manages, guilt overtaking the shock in his struggle to talk without just screaming, because that’s about as eloquent as he feels at the moment. Tony nods sagely, turning onto the road that takes them up into the woods and towards his house.

 

“Made it out okay, though,” Steve follows up, attempting to seem nonchalant despite the fact that he’s about to boil over with the knowledge of Tony’s imminent beating that he’s supposed to orchestrate. 

 

“Well, that’s good to hear. I think that’s a cause for celebration, what about you?”

 

“Celebration?”

 

Tony shrugs.

 

“Or we can celebrate the big win on Saturday. I’m not picky as long as there’s alcohol involved.”

 

“Oh. I guess so, yeah.”

 

He frowns at his inability to pull a coherent thought together. Thankfully, Tony keeps quiet until they make it to his house, only giving a long groan when he stretches after parking the car. Steve  _ tries _ not to stare, really and truly, he does, but of course he stares anyways. 

 

“My aunt won’t be home for a while. She works late.”

 

Steve nods, even though he didn’t ask, wondering what his aunt being home has to do with anything. Of course, he finds this out soon enough, as they end up pawing through her rather extensive liquor cabinet in search of something that suits Tony’s tastes. Ultimately, they come up with a full bottle of expensive-looking champagne from the back of the cabinet that he insists she won’t miss, and from there, it’s on to the kitchen, where they scrounge up two glasses. 

 

“To your win this weekend,” Tony starts, grinning at him, then adds an afterthought: “and to your ass in those pants.”

 

He pops the bottle with a hoot and pours them both nearly-full glasses of the stuff, clinking the rims together before swallowing most of it down. Steve follows suit, only taking a sip or two before looking at Tony as if to say,  _ what now _ ? His question is promptly answered by Tony picking up the bottle and leaving the kitchen, going straight for the stairs. Only a step and a half behind, Steve follows him upstairs and down a hallway, stopping at the end as Tony opens a door and pushes his way into what Steve assumes is his room. His jaw very nearly drops at the sight of how huge it is, taking up the space of probably well over half of Steve’s own  _ house _ , let alone at least three or four times the size of his own room. It’s dominated on one side by what he’s sure is the biggest bed he’s ever seen, next to a messy desk with mountains of papers covering its surface. On the other side of the room sits a whole living room of his own, complete with a TV, a couch, and an obnoxiously large stereo system. 

 

Tony reaches around him and shuts the door, seemingly not noticing (or just completely ignoring) Steve’s shock as he goes for the stereo, hitting a button and turning it on. With music filling the room, he turns and goes to the couch, plopping down with a satisfied sigh and pouring himself another glass of champagne. Shaking himself, Steve follows, sitting on the other end and finishing his glass when Tony offers to top him up, letting him refill it instead. They sit quietly for a few minutes, drinking their champagne and eyeing each other, Tony’s music loud enough to make it not completely awkward to say nothing. When both of their glasses are empty, Tony leans over to pluck it from Steve’s fingers, setting them on the ground and scooting closer, looking him dead in the eye. His heart leaps into his throat, the same shaky feeling that he felt in Tony’s car coming back all at once at full force. This time, Steve’s bolder than he was before, taking Tony’s lead and moving to the middle of the couch until they’re only an inch or so apart.

 

“So,” Tony starts, his voice  _ doing things _ to Steve he didn’t even know could be done. He doesn’t have to say anything else. His hand is doing all the talking for him, first touching Steve’s knee, then sliding upwards little by little. Tony looks at him unflinchingly, maybe gauging his reaction, maybe just hell-bent on melting him into a little puddle on the couch, his hand creeping up and up and up. It dips down, towards the inner part of his leg, and that’s all Steve needs before he decides  _ fuck it _ and abandons whatever reservations he had left, leaning over and kissing Tony.

 

He thinks for a second about how clumsy he feels, not sure where to put his hands or even what he’s doing at all, but all doubts leave his head when Tony grabs the front of his shirt and tugs, forcing Steve even closer. He makes a surprised little noise, entirely on accident, only barely stopping himself from toppling over sideways with a hand on Tony’s chest, which earns him a soft sound in response. Then, all at once, Tony’s moving, depositing himself firmly in Steve’s lap with a leg on either side, all without breaking contact. It’s impressive and intimidating, honestly, how smoothly he manages it. Briefly, Steve’s wondering how many people Tony’s done this with, how many  _ guys _ he’s done this with, and lo and behold, he’s starting to spiral into a god-awful nervous mess underneath him. 

 

Tony notices immediately, because of course he does, and pulls back far enough to look at him, and Steve wishes he could curl up and die right there.

 

“Is this not okay?”

 

Steve watches the change happen on his face, the confidence disappearing in a rush of doubt, followed by an impressively dark frown, and before he can pull himself together enough to stop him, Tony’s scrambling backwards, pushing himself to the furthest corner of the couch.

 

“Tony-”

 

“You’re straight, aren’t you?”

 

Shellshocked, Steve just stares at him, wondering what the absolute hell is going on inside his brain.

 

“You’ve been trying to tell me this whole time, oh god, I just didn’t want to hear it. Please don’t tell anyone, I swear to god I’ll never-”

 

“Tony.”

 

This time, he puts force behind it, recognizing the self-doubt starting to spin out of control in his voice. Tony stops talking, staring at him like he’s looking down the barrel of a gun. It’s so unlike him that Steve stops for a moment, a pang going straight through his stomach at the sight. He wonders if that’s what he looked like right before Marcus punched him, right when Peggy put words to his most private part of himself all the way back in freshman year. It’s the fear of being the next statistic on the last page of the newspaper where they put all the things you aren’t supposed to want to read, the fear of finding yourself cornered in some dark place by people that don’t think you’re supposed to exist. He knows that fear. Steve doesn’t know what to say. If there are words that alleviate that soul-crushing terror even a little, he hasn’t been able to find them yet. So he doesn’t say anything. 

 

He scoots closer to Tony, reaching out and touching his arm, looking him in the eye. Nothing needs to be said. The same understanding passes between them, a silent  _ I know and it’s okay _ . Tony relaxes, just a little, and that’s all Steve needs to close the distance between them, kissing him again. This time, it’s no holds barred, clumsy limbs getting tangled as the two of them attempt to find a comfortable position on the couch without breaking the kiss. It proves to be impossible, but neither of them really care. Steve’s hands find their way into Tony’s hair, finding it to be softer than he expected, and one of Tony’s hands is on his jaw, blunted nails just barely pressing into his skin. He wants to stay here forever, tangled up on the couch like this, kissing Tony until the end of the world. 

 

Someone knocks on the front door loud enough to startle both of them into sitting bolt upright, frozen. 

 

“Should you answer it?”

 

Steve starts to disentangle himself from Tony only a little guiltily, stopping when Tony pushes him back down into the couch with a devilish little smile.

 

“They can wait,” he murmurs into Steve’s neck, busying himself kissing it and promptly making him groan, perfectly content to stay just like this. The knock comes again, louder and more insistent this time, and Steve, as much as he doesn’t want to, urges Tony back upwards.

 

“You should at least see who it is.”

 

Grumbling, Tony gets up. Steve stands up with him, walking to the window to peek outside and see who’s behind the knocking. The second he makes it there, his eyes go right to the car parked in the driveway behind Tony’s, swallowing a sigh.

 

“Peggy.”

 

“As in your not-girlfriend?”

 

He nods, wondering why the hell she’s here and how she even knew where he was. Tony shakes his head, moving away from the window.

 

“Man, she sure does act like one.”

 

“She’s just protective.”

 

The two of them head downstairs as the knocking commences for a third time, followed by a muffled shout that sounds vaguely threatening enough to have Steve hurrying for the door, tugging it open the second he’s close enough.

 

“Steve  _ fucking _ Rogers, you absolute idiot!”

 

She shoves right past him and marches into the house, rounding on Steve as soon as he shuts the door and turns around.

 

“I can’t believe you! How many times do I have to tell you to stay the  _ hell _ away from him before you listen to me?”

 

“What? Peggy, what’s going on?”

 

“What do you think is going on, Steve?”

 

“I have no idea! You just walked in here and started yelling at me!”

 

Tony’s standing off to the side, looking back and forth like he’s at a ping-pong match.

 

“Marcus saw you leaving with him and now he’s pissed.”

 

For what feels like the umpteenth time that day, Steve’s stunned into silence for a few seconds.

 

“How do you know that?”

 

“Natasha,” she states, somewhat miserably, all the anger leaking out of her like a deflating balloon.

 

“The hot redhead?”

 

Tony pipes up, earning him a glare from Peggy that cows him near instantly.

 

“What am I supposed to do?”

 

He hates how small his voice sounds, and the way the fear feels in his belly, cold and unforgiving. 

 

“Well, if you’d taken my advice and just stayed out of trouble then you’d be fine.”

 

She’s stone-cold and staring him down, daring him to challenge her. Normally, that’s not something Steve would go near, but he’s already so amped-up he might as well poke the bear, so he does, loudly and angrily.

 

“You’re the one that brought me here in the first place!”

 

“And I regret it!”

 

“Alright, alright, you two.”

 

Tony steps forward, holding his hands up, only making it a step towards the two of them before the door opens. Steve whips around, a flash-bang of panic going off in his chest, before he realizes it’s Tony’s aunt. She stops in the doorway, looking at the three teenagers in her entryway, only a little concerned.

 

“Tony, what’s going on?”

 

“Nothing,” he starts, opening his mouth to say something else but wisely shutting it when Peggy steps forward, holding out her hand to be shaken.

 

“I’m Peggy, ma’am. Steve’s girlfriend.”

 

The word drops a heavy blanket of reality back over Steve, and from the look on Tony’s face, probably over him as well. 

 

“Oh! Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Peggy.”

 

Peggy nods, smiles, and shakes her hand. Then, she’s looking to Steve, the  _ don’t you dare argue with me _ clear on her face.

 

“Come on, we should be going.”

 

Steve has to clear his throat before he can get any words out.

 

“Right. See you, Tony.”

 

“Later.”

 

He doesn’t wait for Steve to leave before turning and going straight back upstairs. Wishing he could follow Tony back into his room and go back to ignoring everything beyond his door, Steve follows Peggy out to her car, climbing into it with a frown. He hadn’t even been  _ remotely _ careful about leaving with Tony earlier. It’s entirely his fault, and now there’s an unknown price to pay for being caught red-handed a second time. They drive in silence, Peggy mirroring Steve’s frown, her eyebrows drawn together. Trying not to let himself spiral, Steve wonders what Marcus is thinking, if he was even told about the supposed plan yet. Right. The one where he’s supposed to set a trap for Tony to be at the mercy of the team’s anger. Guilt washes over him again, making his mouth go sour, but it’s edged with a little bit of hope. It could be his ticket out of this whole mess - not that he wants it to be, but he might not have any other choice. 

 

Peggy turns the corner to Steve’s street. As soon as his house comes into view, his blood runs cold. Far under the speed limit, she drives up to it and parks across the street like she always does, but neither of them move for a long moment, staring at the car in his driveway and Marcus, leaning against it.


	4. of all the ways i was expecting the world to end, you were never one of them

“What the hell are you doing here?”

 

Peggy’s spitting fire the second they get across the street, and Steve has to grab her arm and hold her back from getting in Marcus’s face. He smiles cooly, not moving from where he’s leaning against the side of his car.

 

“Came to have a talk with your boyfriend. Mind giving us a minute, sweetheart?”

 

If it weren’t for the fact that Steve may or may not be facing imminent demise, he might actually be shocked by how disgustingly sweet Marcus sounds. It’s the voice someone uses when they’re caught by the cookie jar holding one hand behind their back and smiling like they just know their wide eyes and eager smile will get them out of anything, and if you’re Marcus, it almost always does. 

 

“Anything you have to say to him, you can say to me.”

 

She plants her feet, crossing her arms with a scowl on her face. Marcus’s smile falters, then fades entirely when she shows no signs of moving, staring him down with a look that’s got Steve wondering what the hell Marcus is made of to not be even slightly shaken by. 

 

“Rogers,” he says, all slow and  _ you’re going to do what I want or you’ll regret it _ , “tell her to back off.”

 

He doesn’t even get a chance to open his mouth before Peggy’s leaning forward, drawing out her words nice and slow so there’s no chance Marcus will miss them.

 

“Bite me.”

 

Feeling like he’s stuck fast between Washington and Moscow, Steve’s staring at Peggy with a sort of abject horror.

 

“Pegs,” he says softly, eager to diffuse the tension. If he wants to make it out in one piece, this is definitely  _ not _ the way to start things.

 

“I’ll be fine,” he tries, touching a hand to her shoulder cautiously, only a little afraid he might set her off entirely and have her explode in both his and Marcus’s face.

 

“Yeah,” Marcus supplies, wholly unhelpfully, “he’ll be  _ fine _ .”

 

The twist on the word makes him more uncomfortable than he’d like to admit, but Steve does his best to ignore it and focus on getting Peggy out of harm’s way.

 

“Come on,” he very nearly pleads, “I’ll only be a minute.”

 

Finally, she breaks the staring contest to look at him, raising an eyebrow that very clearly tells him, in a snark-filled voice that he knows all too well,  _ Steve Rogers, you’re an idiot _ . He nods,  _ I know _ , and she huffs a sigh, stomping towards the house without another word. Both Steve and Marcus watch her go inside, saying nothing until the door slams shut behind her.

 

“Damn, Rogers. She really is something, huh?”

 

Steve doesn’t respond to the comment, clearly meant to get under his skin what with its barbed edges and Marcus’s wolfish smile. It’s better not to until he knows what game Marcus is playing, else he might walk himself right into a trap. 

 

“What do you want, Marcus?”

 

“Saw you leaving with our little friend earlier,” he fires back, right down to business, “thought we agreed on your fling being  _ over _ .”

 

“Tony,” Steve mutters, stopping himself as soon as he realizes how bad it sounds, then deciding he’s been keeping quiet for much too long and continuing anyways, “his name is Tony.”

 

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what his name is.”

 

He can’t help the wince at the thinly veiled threat on his voice, but it does nothing to make him any less annoyed, all the things he should’ve said before he got punched bubbling up into his throat like some unbidden spring of  _ fuck-you-that’s-what-his-name-is _ . 

 

“Have you talked to Drew yet?”

 

The question earns him a bit of a sideways look.

 

“What the fuck’s Drew got to do with this? You bangin’ him, too?”

 

“Nobody’s banging anybody,” Steve grits out, about done with the insinuation that he’s sticking it into everyone he comes within three feet of, “Tony wants to smooth things over.”

 

“So you’re what, the negotiator? Funny how that works out.”

 

Doing his best to ignore the sarcasm and avoid adding another black eye to his collection of bruises inflicted by Marcus, Steve forces a smile and nods.

 

“Drew thinks I should get him to meet a few of the guys so you can get him good when he’s not expecting it.”

 

It’s harder than he expected to keep a straight tone through offering Tony up like a goddamn sacrifice, and even harder to keep a smile. But Steve does it anyways, because adrenaline is one hell of a drug and he’s so jacked up on it that he strongly suspects he might not feel getting hit with a car right about now. Marcus’s eyebrows go up the second he’s done making the offer, a sight that makes Steve sick to his stomach even though he knew it was coming.

 

“Yeah?”

 

He nods, swallowing hard against the  _ please don’t do it, I don’t care if you kill me instead just don’t touch him _ currently lodged in his throat.

 

“When?”

 

Steve lifts a shoulder and drops it, hoping to God that he has at least a week to prepare himself (and work up the nerve to actually tell Tony), but some part of him knows he won’t be that lucky.

 

“Tomorrow,” Marcus says, decidedly, and Steve can feel himself go white, “last time we gave him time to find out, he ran.”

 

Unable to get a word out, Steve just nods, nice and slow, doing his best to keep the smile on his face so Marcus thinks he’s excited at the prospect instead of fucking terrified. 

 

“Sounds like a plan, then.”

 

Marcus drops a hand onto his shoulder, grinning. If the pavement opened up under his feet and sucked him down into the depths of Hell right this very second, Steve’s convinced he very well may be better off for it. 

 

“You know that field? The one out by Johnny’s uncle’s place?”

 

Distantly, Steve remembers a huge bonfire in the middle of a field, a long ways out from civilization, where nobody heard them shouting and laughing and drinking well into the night. Yeah, he remembers it. He nods, fighting off the urge to throw up.

 

“Four o’clock. Don’t be late.”

 

He can’t move. His feet are stuck fast to the ground as Marcus climbs into his car, starting it with a rumble.

 

“We’re counting on you, Rogers. Do us all a favor and don’t fuck this one up.”

 

Steve says nothing. Does nothing. He watches Marcus’s car back out of his driveway until it’s out of his line of sight, then listens to it tear off down the street, and he still doesn’t move. His heart is pounding so hard he feels like it might burst, blood rushing in his ears. He can’t catch his breath.  _ Tomorrow _ . Somehow, he stumbles forward, wanting to get inside before he loses it entirely, feeling the full-on hyperventilating coming on fast. His hand hits the knob and it gives way immediately, and he would be falling if Peggy doesn’t catch him, saying his name over and over like he’s not drowning and can say something back. He tries for all of half a second, manages to give her a little cough, then sinks right back down into absolutely fucking having a cow. 

 

It feels like an extraordinarily long time before Steve is calm enough to talk, even though it’s probably only a little while. 

 

“Tomorrow,” is the first thing he says, all start-stop jagged sounds and thick with the tears he keeps trying to hide. 

 

“Hm?”

 

Peggy’s looking at him again, face arranged to say  _ I’m sorry the world always chews you up and spits you out but really you should be used to this by now _ . 

 

“Marcus wants me to bring him Tony tomorrow.”

 

It feels like a miracle he even manages to say it out loud without breaking down all over again, nerves consuming him like a brushfire, fast and violent. Peggy’s face goes from  _ oh _ to dark and stormy and only a little murderous.

 

“Are you going to?”

 

She sounds afraid. That doesn’t bode well for him  _ or _ Tony, considering she’s about the last person to be scared of anything. There could be a mushroom cloud looming over them and she’d set her jaw and tell him he really should’ve taken her advice and skipped town three hours ago when she’d somehow heard the birds whispering about something flying towards them without wings. To have her looking at him with a tight-lipped frown and her hands twisting together in her lap where she thinks he might not notice just makes everything feel that much more suffocating. 

 

“I don’t have a choice,” he says, like he’s resigning himself to it, which he supposes he is. 

 

“I’m sorry, Steve.”

 

“You were right.”

 

She knows what he means. She has to, by the way her jaw tightens just a little and her eyes dart away guiltily.

 

“If I’d just stayed away from him, this wouldn’t be happening.”

 

The way her mouth curves into the faintest hint of a frown tells him she’s thinking  _ you’re right, I did say that _ and  _ I told you so _ but she doesn’t want to say either because they’ll come out too razor-sharp, even for her. 

 

“Tony doesn’t deserve this.”

 

It’s almost unsettling how quiet Peggy’s staying. Or, it would be unsettling, if Steve could focus on it through the chaos he’s currently all wrapped up in, some sick mixture of panic and fear and guilt and anger. He falls silent, too, figuring she doesn’t need to hear any more of it. They’re left sitting uncomfortably side-by-side on the couch, avoiding eye contact, Steve lost in trying to think up a way out of an impossible situation and Peggy probably wishing he’d just done as she’d told him to right from the beginning because then they wouldn’t be here. 

 

Eventually, Steve’s stomach wins out over all else, and he ends up poking around in the refrigerator for something to eat. He doesn’t find much, so he settles on eating cereal while sitting cross-legged on the floor, already having rapid-cycled to the depression stage. The house is deafeningly silent. Peggy hasn’t moved from her spot on the couch, probably doing her best to think up some daring plot to get him and Tony out of this alive. He appreciates the thought, really, but it’s no use. If there’s anything he’s absolutely sure about, it’s that. He knows how Marcus works, and when he gets his mind set on something, it’s impossible to change his mind, and trying just means another black eye or split lip. 

 

He stands up, leaving his empty bowl in the sink, and wanders back into the living room to find Peggy curled up on the couch, the most impressive frown Steve’s ever seen on her face. She barely even acknowledges his presence, only briefly glancing at him before returning to staring down at the carpet. 

 

“Pegs,” he says, near a whisper, and she looks up again, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

 

_ For doubting you _ .  _ For screwing up everything you’ve done for me _ .  _ For not being the boyfriend I should be for you _ .

 

He shrugs. Peggy smiles, tense and only half-real, and he sits next to her, doing his best to keep his cool this time around.

 

“I should probably tell him.”

 

“You don’t have to do this.”

 

_ I wish it were that easy _ .

 

“I’ll be okay.”

 

“No you won’t,” she says, in her best  _ don’t you dare try to argue with me _ voice, “I know you better than that, Steve.”

 

He sighs, leans back into the couch and tries to sound braver than he ever could be.

 

“Tony and I will figure something out.”

 

“ _ Tony _ is what got you into this mess in the first place.”

 

If it weren’t true, maybe he’d be angry. But it  _ is _ true, and it’s what he hasn’t wanted to admit to himself since he came home to Marcus in his driveway like he was in freshman year all over again. 

 

“And I’m going to have to talk to him, one way or another. It’s not like I can just ask Marucs for a rain check, Peggy.”

 

She huffs a little noise, indignant but fully aware he’s right. 

 

“We should wait until it’s dark,” he says after a moment, trying his best to prove he’s at least being smart about it, “just to be safe,”

 

“Fine.”

 

And that’s that for the next hour and a half. Steve spends it trying to do homework, but he doesn’t get much done. He’s too busy thinking through the last few weeks, wondering how the hell he’d gone from being begrudgingly accepted into Marcus’s circle to being made to do their dirty work because he can’t keep to himself well enough. If it weren’t for Tony and the dangerous smile that caught him by surprise, he wouldn’t be here, and Tony wouldn’t have been dragged into his screwed-up life. 

 

By the time Peggy’s gathering her keys and walking to the front door to wait for him without a word, he’s made it through three of the ten problems Coulson assigned. Steve leaves it where it is, figuring he’ll deal with it later - there are more important things to worry about right now. He follows Peggy outside and into her car, the silence growing more and more suffocating the longer it goes on. She starts driving, and little by little, Steve’s nerves start to come back. How is he supposed to tell Tony what he has to do? How the  _ hell _ is he supposed to make it out of this whole mess without ruining whatever they have? Staring out the window as the world passes by, Steve wishes desperately that he could just disappear and never have to worry about Marcus or the football team or school ever again and could instead spend his time pressed up against Tony. He has no idea what to call the silent  _ thing _ they’ve got going, and as much as Steve wants to hate it for all the chaos it’s brought into his life, he just can’t. There’s something about the way Tony looks at him, touches him, that’s so disgustingly intoxicating, and he can’t get enough of it. 

 

The car stops. Steve looks up at Tony’s house and his car in the driveway, not sure if his legs will hold him should he try to walk up to the front door. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest, and if he weren’t making fists so tight his nails bite into his palms, his hands would be shaking.

 

“Tony can drive me home,” he says, in a worried little mumble even though he tries his best to sound casual.

 

Peggy doesn’t say anything. He looks over, expecting to find her glaring at something with enough fervor to burn a hole in it, but her face is picked clean. If she’s angry with him for insisting on going back to Tony’s, she’s not showing it. 

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

 

Nothing. Swallowing back the feeling that he’s fucking up immensely, Steve climbs out of the car, starting up the driveway before he can convince himself to just drive away and sink into bed and never get back out. He’s not even halfway to the door when Peggy drives away. It makes him feel like he’s seconds away from throwing up, but he keeps going despite it, fully aware that every second it takes him to get to the door is a second closer to freaking out again. He knocks hurriedly, hoping Tony will answer it so he doesn’t have to put on a smile for his aunt and pretend like everything’s okay. He’s not that lucky, but she barely takes one look at him before flashing a smile and walking away, shouting for Tony. Steve hovers uncomfortably in the doorway, clasping his hands together to keep them from shaking too badly. 

 

Tony turns the corner and pauses the second he sees Steve, surprise flashing over his face before turning to worry. He calls out that he’ll be back later and then they’re leaving in a rush, hurrying to his car and climbing into it without a word being said. It’s quiet, but not the kind of quiet like Peggy’s that makes him feel like his insides are hell-bent on tying themselves into knots and choking him to death. This kind is almost comforting, and as soon as Tony’s backed out of the driveway, he’s reaching for Steve’s hand and holding it. He looks down at their hands, hovering over the center console like a well-kept secret, anchoring him down to the passenger seat. For a minute, the panic subsides, a gentle feeling of being  _ okay _ filling him from the toes up, a smile very nearly finding its way to his face. It’s a private kind of comfort, the kind that nobody else can see or it would lose its power entirely, but here, in the dark in Tony’s car as they drive deeper and deeper into the woods, it’s perfect. 

 

Tony pulls into the familiar clearing and turns off his car. Total silence descends on them all at once like a dropped curtain, and with it, the calm disappears, leaving Steve stranded high on a plateau of anxious energy. Tony must feel the shift, because he tightens his grip on Steve’s hand and looks at him, eyes searching for an answer.

 

“What if someone sees us here?”

 

“They won’t.”

 

Steve wants to believe him, but the image of Marcus somehow finding them and doing the job right then and there and leaving their bodies for the coyotes to find won’t leave his head.

 

“I’ve been coming here since I moved in with my aunt and I’ve never seen anyone else,” Tony tells him, “and besides, we’ll see them before they see us.”

 

He takes a slow, deep breath, then lets it out, trying to convince himself that everything is going to be okay. It’s a valiant effort, but ends up going nowhere. There’s quiet for a handful of seconds, in which Tony’s other hand finds the back of the one he’s holding and cups it, thumb running across Steve’s knuckles. 

 

“So,” Tony starts, filling the silence again, and Steve swallows hard, trying to figure out how to break the news. It’s really no use making it pretty, since it’s not like there’s a way for any of this to go well.

 

“Are we continuing where we left off?”

 

He’s barely gotten the whole sentence out when Steve blurts it out, finally, ugly and tense with nerves.

 

“I think I have to beat you up.”

 

He looks up at Tony, only processing the sly, flirtatious words he’d been handed after the fact, immediately feeling awful for ruining the mood. His eyebrows make for his hairline, and he looks at Steve like that for a second before breaking into a grin.

 

“Wow. Didn’t peg you as being into that, but hey, I’m not judging. Might wanna leave the kinky stuff for the second date next time, though, word of advice.”

 

More than a little startled, Steve sort of just looks at him, mouth half-open with an explanation waiting on the tip of his tongue. Of all the reactions he’d imagined (Tony hating him, cursing him out, punching him square in the face, never wanting to talk to him again, leaving him there in the middle of the woods while he drives somewhere safe and far away) he most certainly had  _ not _ been expecting that one. Tony’s looking right back at him, his grin faltering as he catches on to the implications of Steve’s silence.

 

“You’re serious?”

 

He nods, not exactly eager to say it out loud any more than he absolutely has to. It would make the whole thing feel too real. Something like fear crosses Tony’s face, but it’s quickly swept away by that awful flatness that Steve can never get a proper bearing on. 

 

“Shit,” he mutters, looking back out at the road as the edges of his mouth twitch downwards, “thought I’d have more time.”

 

Steve squeezes his hand a little, immensely glad he’s got the point of contact, or else he might be completely lost at sea right about now. 

 

“Marcus saw us leaving together,” he finally says, wishing he’d looked over his shoulder just once before getting in the car, and maybe then they wouldn’t be here. What he doesn’t say is that it was his idea, the only way he could think of to save his own ass, except he didn’t stop to try and save Tony’s, so here they are.

 

Tony’s eyebrows are drawn together and Steve suddenly feels as if the entire world were crashing down on his shoulders. It makes sense, really. He’s never been good at the things he should be, like keeping the people he cares about safe and keeping his head down and doing what he needs to do until he graduates. The only reason he’s managed to make it this far is Peggy, and now she’s at her wit’s end with him. He’s up and ruined everything now - his standing with Marcus, Peggy’s generosity, and now whatever it was he was doing here with Tony. 

 

“You could go,” he whispers, though it seems deafeningly loud against the silence, “you don’t have to deal with them. It’s my fault anyways.”

 

He’s on the verge of breaking down again, his chest virtually vibrating with nerves and the urge to get up and run until he can’t think any more. 

 

“No,” Tony says, haltingly, after far too long. He squeezes Steve’s hand a little, then looks at him, face back to that carefully-arranged neutrality, but this time Steve can see something dark in his eyes.

 

“No?”

 

“I’m staying here,” he tells Steve, like there’s absolutely no changing his mind, “with you.”

 

“But-”

 

“I’ve had worse.”

 

That shuts him up. Worse than this, than being told he’s about to be at the mercy of some of the worst people Steve knows? There’s a pain in his chest, the distinct feeling of wanting to tell Tony it’ll be okay but knowing it won’t be.

 

“You don’t deserve this,” Steve says, miserably, “I’m sorry.”

 

“Hey.”

 

Tony’s hand goes to his cheek, surprisingly soft.

 

“It’s okay.”

 

Steve doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand what Tony sees in him, really. He’s smart and got a tongue sharper than a blade and funny and  _ gorgeous _ and all Steve is is a coward, trapped by himself and too afraid to stick it to a world he knows thinks he shouldn’t exist. He cares too much and too little and doesn’t think enough then thinks too much, like he’s a goddamn walking contradiction, and can never figure out just quite what he wants. There’s got to be something -  _ someone _ \- better out there. 

 

Tony leans over and kisses him square on the lips, like he can hear Steve’s mind racing. Suddenly, the realization washes over him that he’s wasting the time he has here, right now, with Tony, and then he’s kissing him back with all the anxious energy he’s been carrying around inside of him for years and years. They’re right back where they were a few hours ago, before the world started crumbling around them, grabbing for each other like they can never get close enough. Tony moves first, scrambling through the gap between the seats into the back with some sort of unholy grace that’s got him sliding into the seat with his legs spread wide and a look on his face that does  _ things _ to Steve. He’s following a second later, much less gracefully, but for once, he can’t find it in himself to care. They crash into each other all over again, and Steve is certain he’s really going to go up in flames this time. 

 

There’s something so perfect about feeling Tony against him like this, hot and close and incredible, and Steve’s hands are shaking with the intensity of all of it. He anchors them on either side of Tony’s face, just so he can hold on for dear life and never let him get away, ever, because he’s completely convinced that if he were to lose this, he would die right then and there, on the spot. Tony finds his way into Steve’s lap completely unbidden, but on God he’s not complaining. When his hand finds its way into Steve’s hair and tugs, the noise he makes is downright  _ filthy _ and that’s when he knows he’s done for, completely and totally fucked. He has no idea what he’s supposed to be doing with his hands or if he’s even doing the kissing thing properly, but he could care less when Tony starts kissing down his neck, making Steve strain up against him. Very quickly, his pants are getting uncomfortable, and if this lasts much longer, he might truly go crazy.

 

Then there’s a hand on his stomach, moving down to his waist, and Steve very nearly loses it right there. Tony pulls back to give himself space to pop the button, and he watches him do it in a sort of stupor, the one-eighty his view of the world just performed - from  _ oh god no _ to  _ oh god yes _ in the span of about ten seconds - making his head spin. There’s some readjusting, a bit of shifting on his part and moving to slide down and rearrange himself so that he somehow ends up between Steve’s legs on Tony’s. The entire thing seems so surreal that, for a second, Steve convinces himself that he’s dreaming, because there’s no way any of this is real. There’s absolutely no way that it’s  _ actually _ Tony pressing kisses to the skin of his lower stomach, hands busily undressing him far enough to expose parts of him nobody besides his mother had ever seen. His cheeks go bright red and an embarrassed little sound escapes his mouth, making Tony pause and look up at him.

 

“Have you ever done this before?”

 

_ Oh _ . Steve chokes out a little ‘no’, too distracted by Tony’s hand, heavy on his thigh, to say much else. He’s expecting at least a laugh, or maybe an eyeroll, but he gets neither, only a little hum and a raised eyebrow before Tony’s mouth closes over him and Steve nearly swallows his tongue. He knots a hand into his hair for something to stabilize himself on, doing his best to keep his hips from going anywhere and choking Tony. It’s all he can do at the moment, considering it feels as though he’s being taken apart piece by piece and put back together by the unholy thing Tony’s tongue is currently doing. A groan is pulled out of his chest, sounding almost surprised, and it seems to spur Tony on, because he puts double the effort into it, forcing more sounds out of Steve that only serve to make his face go beet red. 

 

Steve isn’t much of a religious man, and he’s not sure if he’s ever really bought the idea of an afterlife, but he’d swear on anything right about now that he’s found heaven in the back seat of Tony’s car. There’s a goddamn rhapsody of obscene sounds coming from him, now, mixed with gasps of Tony’s name, and when he comes, it’s one long, shuddering whine of it, the  _ y _ all high-pitched and damn near desperate. 

 

When he comes floating back down, Tony’s looking at him, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. It takes a few seconds for the reality of what just happened to sink in, and by the time he’s got himself properly tucked away and is capable of proper speech, Tony’s settling into the seat next to him, still wearing that shit-eating grin. He has no idea what to say, so he just awkwardly looks at him, probably still as red as the car itself. His mind is still a little fuzzy, anyways, and it’s not like he has much experience with what the socially acceptable thing to say is in this kind of situation, so he decides it’s better to just keep his mouth shut and smile and hope Tony doesn’t take it the wrong way. That is, until he realizes he’s hardly put a hand on Tony, and immediately rushes to fix his obvious blunder.

 

“Do you want me to, uh..?”

 

Tony pats him on the shoulder, smiling at the offer. 

 

“You can take care of me as much as you want after you beat me up, but I think that’s enough for one night.”

 

In the space of two blinks, the mood is absolutely ruined in the most  _ Tony _ way possible.

 

“You know, it’s sort of cute when you get all blushy and virginal.”

 

Despite being reminded of tomorrow looming over their heads, Steve can’t help but grin at the accusation.

 

“I’m not a virgin!”

 

The words sort of just explode out of him, only a little offended, mostly bemused,

 

“Not anymore.”

 

It’s delivered with a wink and Steve wants to disappear for all of ten seconds, until Tony’s leaning in and kissing him gently. It’s not like before, which was all heat and  _ I want this and you _ \- it’s soft,  _ take off your jacket and stay for a while _ . It doesn’t last nearly as long as Steve would like, but by the time they settle down together, Tony nestled next to him with their arms around each other, he doesn’t mind any more. It’s a little awkward, crammed into the backseat and awkwardly twisting to face each other on the seat, but they’re making do with it well enough. 

 

“This is nice,” Steve mumbles, immediately realizing how stupid it sounded and cringing internally. 

 

“Yeah,” Tony agrees, after a moment, resting his head on Steve’s shoulder, “it is.”

 

There are a lot of things he wants to say. He wants to ask Tony if he’s been with many guys, but that comes off as just a little insensitive, even to him, so he doesn’t. He wants to ask him why he moved here, of all places, with his aunt, and where he’s from, and all sorts of other things that really don’t matter in the long run, but Steve wants to know them anyways. He comes to the conclusion that he just wants to know him, beyond everything at school and all the things that have happened between the two of them,  _ really _ know him.  _ Maybe _ . He shouldn’t get his hopes up. After all, the world wasn’t meant for people like him, and tomorrow is just proof of that. 

 

“What are we going to do?”

 

He can’t help it. The thought of Marcus’s wolfish grin and the unspoken threat behind it is too large, too overwhelming. 

 

“About what?”

 

“Tomorrow.”

 

Tony tenses up, just a little, and Steve wishes he could take the words back. 

 

“I don’t want to think about it,” he says softly, almost afraid, “not tonight.”

 

“Okay,” Steve agrees, very much liking the sound of that but doubting it’ll actually be possible, at least for him. 

 

Turns out, it is pretty possible, once Tony starts talking again. It’s not about anything deep or soul-searchingly meaningful, but he makes Steve laugh and that’s the important part, really. They lay there, despite the uncomfortable position and precarious balance on the seat, alternating between kissing and talking, for hours, long into the night. By the time Steve’s dropped off at home, he’s left feeling warm and full of hope, watching Tony drive away with a smile on his face, missing his arms already. 


	5. these stars can't be crossed forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> little bit of a warning for this chapter: there's some descriptions of violence, which is (albeit pretty vaguely, blink-and-you'll-miss-it) hatecrime-y. it's not too graphic, but you might want to read with caution if that sort of thing is upsetting to you.

Tony’s got this set to his jaw that Steve can’t stop looking at. He doesn’t want to look at the road, doesn’t want to face where they’re going, so aside from glancing up every so often to mumble another halting direction, he doesn't. Instead, he focuses on the way Tony has both hands on the steering wheel, so tight it looks like he might just pull the whole thing off. He lets his eyes follow the sharp curve of his jaw and catch on the way the collar of his leather jacket never seems to be laying properly in the back, and how there’s always the corner of a pack of cigarettes peeking out of one of his pockets. As they turn onto a winding dirt road, Steve realizes he’s drinking in the picture sitting next to him like it’s the last time he’ll ever see Tony like this again, and that thought makes him promptly swallows whatever little bit of calm he had been harboring. 

 

“Tony,” he says without thinking about it, all four letters rolling off his tongue almost desperately.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

He’s said it a thousand times between last night and where they are now, and every time, he’s gotten the same response. 

 

“Don’t worry about it,” he tells Steve through gritted teeth, and really, he wasn’t expecting anything different, “I’ll be okay. I’ve had worse.”

 

He wants to make him stop the car right then and there so Steve can hold him until every last vestige of that terrible long-ago pain is gone from the edges of his voice, until he can erase the ghost of whatever fists or words he’s been subjected to before he’d come crashing into Steve’s world. But he can’t. They’re on a tight schedule, Tony pointed out at least four different times as they clung to each other in his back seat up in their tucked-away spot in the woods, every time with the same tight smile-that-isn’t-really-a-smile and tone that tries to convince Steve he’s joking about the whole thing. His eyes cut sideways just long enough to meet Steve’s before jumping back to the uneven, lazily sidewinding road they’re crawling down so slow he can almost convince himself they might never get where they’re going. 

 

“Steve,” Tony’s saying like he knows what’s going on in his head, all soft edges like he knows it won’t make a difference but it’s a nice gesture anyways, “I’ll be fine.”

 

Steve opens his mouth to let free the  _ no you won’t _ and the  _ I’m scared _ he’s been holding in since he woke up to an overcast sky and a heavy weight in the bottom of his stomach. Nothing comes out. It strikes him as more than a little rude to sit there and air his woes when Tony’s virtually looking death in the eyes, so he chews on the inside of his cheek and keeps quiet. They round one last bend in the road - more of a wooded path at this point, really - and the field opens up in front of them, vast and brown and coldly threatening. Tony parks a little ways from the entrance of it, enough out of the way to give room for the car that won’t be long behind them, not too far to seem like he’s scared. It’s impressive how much of a brave face he’s putting on. Steve only wishes he could do the same.

 

In silence, Tony lets go of the wheel, hands dropping to his lap. He’s still staring forwards when he reaches over and gropes for Steve’s hand, the only visible crack in his visage of courage. They sit there, two boys in a car in the middle of a field where Steve is half sure they’ll both meet their unforgiving ends. If he closes his eyes and pretends hard enough maybe, just  _ maybe _ , he’d be able to forget about everything that’s supposed to happen. He tries, tipping his head back against the seat and sucking in a lungful of air through his nose, slow and steady like Peggy used to coach him to do when he’d come home all twitchy from practice in the early days of those awful swirling rumors and all the locker room taunts he hadn’t grown a thick enough skin for yet, but it’s not long before the breath forces its way out in a rush, bordering on sheer panic. 

 

Tony squeezes his hand. Steve opens his eyes, looks over, and he’s looking right back at him, a strained little smile on his face. He wants to kiss him, wants to replace that awful expression with his stupid half-crooked grin, but he’s not enough of an idiot to risk it, so he just looks back at him, trying (and failing) to force a smile of his own. 

 

“Whatever happens out there,” Tony starts, soft and slow, “at least we have this, right?”

 

_ This _ is directed down at their laced fingers, and a little voice in the back of Steve’s head whispers  _ had _ . 

 

“Yeah,” he whispers, doing his best to sound less afraid of losing whatever  _ this _ is and not succeeding much, “we do.”

 

Something on his voice makes Tony give a little sigh, sinking down in his seat and tracing the pads of the fingers of his free hand across Steve’s knuckles. 

 

“I don’t blame you, Rogers,” he says, and if it were anyone else, his last name might make him flinch, but this is Tony and the syllables sound uncharacteristically warm coming from him, “it was only a matter of time before...”

 

He trails off, leaving Steve to fill in the rest of the sentence.  _ Before the world caught up with him - with us _ . All things considered, he’s the lucky one, but he sure doesn’t feel like it. He wants to tell Tony he never meant for things to go like this, he never meant for him to get hurt, but he’s already said it too many times to count and the sad look Tony gets on his face every time he does is worse than not saying anything at all. He can only apologize so many times before he sounds like a broken record, anyway. 

 

“You remember the plan?”

 

Tony’s voice is just a little uneven, just a little strained. Steve nods slowly, wishing it had come to anything but this.

 

“Good.”

 

He’s nodding, squeezing Steve’s hand to reassure him one last time, and he’s about to say something else when they hear something off in the distance, so quiet it’s almost not there, but they know without a doubt that it’s the four horsemen of apocalypse coming for them. Steve freezes up, staring straight down at his lap with something akin to regret filling his throat with bile. Tony’s breath goes all funny, high-pitched and fast like he’s trying not to cry, and he squeezes Steve’s hand once more as the motor’s sound draws closer, letting go the second its car roars into view. Despite wanting to hide in the trunk until it’s all over, Steve takes a deep breath and forces himself to at least look relaxed as he gets out of the car, circling around to lean against its side with Tony. He keeps an easy smile, somehow, glancing sideways to find all the tension gone from Tony’s shoulders and jaw, his head cocked as he lights a smoke. 

 

The car pulls up next to them, music cutting off short only seconds before the four are unloading, gathering in a rough semicircle around Steve and Tony, locking them in place. Ever-casual, Tony quirks an eyebrow, draws on his cigarette, and flicks a nonexistent ash to the ground before greeting them.

 

“Afternoon, boys.”

 

He almost doesn’t sound like himself. There’s so much confidence behind the words that it almost seems like he might throw the first punch himself, but that’s not what they planned, so Steve knows it won’t go down like that no matter how much praying and hoping he does. 

 

“Don’t stand too close, Rogers. Girls don’t like their men smellin’ like rat.”

 

Johnny spits the last word at Tony’s feet, gearing up for a fight already. Marcus shoots him a look that shuts him up -  _ don’t spoil our plan, idiot, he’s not supposed to see it coming _ . 

 

“Heard you wanted to make things right,” he says to Tony, eyeing him cooly, the way a wolf stares down its prey, “figured you’d come around sooner or later.”

 

Easy as pie, Tony lifts a shoulder and drops it, taking another long drag to blow the smoke in Drew’s direction, meeting Marcus’s eyes unflinchingly. 

 

“Figured you’d jump at a chance to have someone help you pass physics again,” he slings back at him, and Steve has to hold back a wince at how Marcus’s face darkens at the insult. 

 

“That’s not how friends talk to each other,” Marcus warns him, like one would scold a child, “is it, Rogers?”

 

“Don’t think so,” he manages to push out of his mouth, though not as smooth as he would’ve liked. 

 

“Right,” Tony drawls, flicking ash to the ground again, “so we’re friends now? That didn’t take long.”

 

“Not so fast,” he’s saying, and then in an instant everyone is moving, hardly giving time for the shock to register in Tony’s face before he’s being hauled off to the side by Johnny and Pat, one arm to each of them, his cigarette landing on the ground in front of him. 

 

He gapes for a second, the surprise real enough until he catches hold of his fight-or-flight instinct and sticking to the plan, and then he’s struggling, trying to worm his way out of their grip.

 

“What the fuck? Come on, guys, don’t do this. Don’t be like this, it was a joke, okay?”

 

Marcus and Drew just watch, standing square with their arms crossed and matching smiles on their faces. 

 

“Steve, what the fuck?”

 

His name, rough and sharp like that, sends a bolt right through his chest. They’d talked about this, about how if he didn’t know, Tony would be angry at the betrayal, and how it wouldn’t make sense for him not to be, but hearing his name dropped like it disgusted him was something Steve could never be quite prepared for.

 

“I thought you said we were just talking, man, what the hell?”

 

Tony’s eyes are jumping between Steve and Marcus, wide and panicked. It’s such a believable performance that he wonders for half a second how many times this has happened to him, how many times he’s been through the motions of something like this.

 

“Fuck you,” Tony spits, staring him dead on with venom on his voice, “I  _ trusted _ you, you promised me nothing would happen,  _ fuck you _ !”

 

He’s shouting the last part, hoarse and terrified, and Steve thinks it might almost be worse than what’s coming next. Marcus clicks his tongue and steps forward, and Tony immediately balks, falling silent to stare at him, frozen. He looks impossibly tiny, strung up between his captors, bracing himself for a punch that doesn’t come.

 

“Steve,” Marcus says, without taking his eyes off Tony, a sick twist curling the the edges of his smile, “why don’t you do the honor?”

 

Tony’s eyes jump to him, the fear in them for the first time not a performance. Steve’s stomach twists, guts knotting themselves up inside him.

 

“Come on, Rogers,” Drew jeers, shoving his shoulder, “don’t be a pussy.”

 

He’s face to face with Tony now, Pat and Johnny wearing matching grins. 

 

“Hit your  _ boyfriend _ nice and hard for us, Steve,” Marcus hisses from behind him, the word making Tony flinch. 

 

“Please,” he whispers, and to everyone else it must be a  _ please don’t hurt me _ , but to Steve, it’s  _ please, just do it,  _ and the tiny crinkle of smile lines around his eyes says  _ I’ll be okay _ . 

 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Steve whispers, and Tony’s smile lines disappear. 

 

“So what’s with the holdup, huh?”

 

Steve sucks in a breath, wishes he could say  _ I’m sorry _ one more time, and pulls his fist back. Something sparks in Tony’s eyes and his face changes to a stone-cold mask of nothingness.

 

“Fuck you, Steve.”

 

He hits him. 

 

The sound of fist on bone makes him sick, but he can’t stop there. Another fist to the stomach, all the air rushing out of him in a gasp that would make him double over if the hands on his arms don’t force him upright. Another to the side of his ribs, a sickening  _ crack _ that cuts Steve straight down to the bone. Tony gets pulled straight again, wheezing and looking him dead in the eye long enough for Steve to have to swallow back a scream before his fist slams into the side of his jaw. 

 

He falls back, breathing hard, letting Marcus and Drew descend on Tony, the whole world muddling itself in front of his eyes. Black starts to edge in on his vision, tightening until he’s looking down a tunnel at the fray in front of him, Tony staggering back and forth with his fists up like he can protect himself from the four bodies hemming him in, landing punches and shoving him back towards the middle with hoots of laughter and muffled jeers. Somewhere along the line, Steve gets pulled back into it, and he tries to pull his punches, but every pathetic noise Tony makes when he’s hit just spurs the other four boys on, as does the blood running down his face and the way he can’t ever seem to get a real breath in his lungs, and Steve has no choice but to follow. He knew he’d have to, Tony knew he’d have to, they  _ talked  _ about this, about no hard feelings and understanding the way the world works, but no amount of talking could’ve made him ready for this. 

 

Tony collapses. He hits the ground with a grunt and a feeble groan, but nobody stops there. Booted feet land in his ribs time and time again, making him curl up on himself and whimper. Steve backs away, staring at the mess of blood and bruised skin on the ground in front of him, his heart pounding in his ears. He can’t look away, even when the other four start loading into the car behind them, talking and laughing like Tony isn’t laying in an unmoving heap right there. 

 

“Rogers!”

 

Marcus’s voice snaps him back to reality. His chest feels like it might cave in as he gets in the car, eyes still trained on Tony, waiting for him to move. 

 

He doesn’t. 

 

They drive away in a rush of laughter and music, and the smile Steve forces as he stares down at his bloody knuckles is nowhere near genuine, but he can’t find it in himself to care. It’s all he can do to hold it together, sitting quietly in the car while the four guys swap jokes about how pathetic the whole thing was, how unsuspecting Tony was. He even manages a halfhearted goodbye when they drop him off at home, the sight of Peggy’s car in the driveway a welcome sight. He walks up to his door and gets his hand on the handle as they drive away, leaving him alone on the front step with tears welling in his eyes and the image of Tony, broken and bloody, burned into his mind. 

 

He opens the door and Peggy’s waiting for him, wringing her hands together. She doesn’t say a thing, just leads him to the bathroom and gathers gauze for his knuckles, sitting him down on the edge of the tub so she can clean them off. A few passes of a wet rag later and he chokes on a sob as the blood comes off clean, leaving his knuckles unharmed beneath them. He’s sure there will be pain later, but he can hardly complain about it, so he flexes his hand and tries to swallow back another sob, but Peggy hugs him and tells him to let it out, so he breaks down then and there, shoulders shaking. 

 

When he can finally take a breath without it turning into an ugly, heaving sound, Steve forces himself upright, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

 

“We have to go back and get him.”

 

“Steve, we can’t, it’s too-”

 

Screw the plan. Screw letting Tony pick up the pieces and meeting him at home later. He’s not going to leave him laying there like that, not going to risk him never getting up.

 

“I don’t care if it’s dangerous, Peggy, I’m not leaving him.”

 

She looks at him, shakes her head, and before long they’re off again, speeding towards the field where they’d left him, a first aid kid sitting between them. It’s a torturously long drive, even going ten miles an hour over the speed limit. Steve’s on the edge of his seat the whole damn time, praying to God that Tony’s okay, fighting the sinking feeling in his stomach that tells him he’s not. He can’t lose him, not now, not like this. He’ll never forgive himself.  _ Fuck you, Steve _ . Maybe Tony’s already gone, already decided Steve and all his baggage isn’t worth it, and next time they see each other he’ll have the same hatred on his tongue when he says to get lost. It would be the smart thing to do, really. They weren’t supposed to be happy together, not in this lifetime, this fucked-up world. Two boys aren’t supposed to love each other, aren’t supposed to want to die for each other. That’s what this is, isn’t it? Love? The sick feeling in his stomach whenever that sadness creeps in on Tony’s voice but never quite shows up all the way, like he’s trying to hold it back, how badly he wants to burn the world down just to make sure he’s okay? If that’s what love is, no wonder they write songs and books and movies about it. Steve has never felt anything anything like it, anything more terrifying and exhilarating all at once. He feels it every time Tony kisses him, every time he holds his hand, every time he says his name, and now it’s overwhelming him, pulling him under and closing over his head. 

 

Tony’s still laying in the dirt when they make it to the field. Steve hardly waits for Peggy to stop the car before he’s flinging himself out and sprinting over to him, shouting his name through the lump in his throat. He doesn’t respond, just laying there with his limbs splayed like a thrown ragdoll, blood painting the grass around him. 

 

“Tony, please, come on,” he begs, dropping to his knees and shaking his shoulder, tears starting to trace lines down his face.

 

“Tony,” he whispers, voice breaking when he still doesn’t move, lifeless on the ground in front of him, “please-”

 

There’s a little bit of stirring and Steve swallows a cry of relief as Tony shifts sideways just enough to look up at him. His face is a mess, covered in dried blood, swollen and bruised already, but Steve doesn’t care. He helps him sit up a little, slow and trying to ignore the way he winces with every breath, cradling him in his arms.

 

“You’re okay,” he whispers, the smile on his face so big it hurts, and before he can stop it, “I love you.”

 

It falls out of his mouth before he can stop it, but he’s too busy trying to stop crying to think much of it. Tony breaks into a weak little smile, reaching up with a badly-hidden grimace to touch Steve’s cheek.

 

“Hey, Romeo,” he whispers, cracked and barely-there, “fancy seein’ you here.”

 

He’s almost sad there was no  _ I love you too _ . That’s how it’s supposed to work, a tearful confession and a heartfelt response, then they kiss and ride off into the sunset. He should’ve known better. For all of two seconds, Steve’s torn up about it, wishing he could take it back because there’s no doubt it was the wrong thing to say, then the relief that Tony’s  _ alive _ sweeps over him and he just smiles back, holding him as tenderly as possible. Peggy kneels down in front of him, on Tony’s other side. He looks at her from the corner of his eye, not bothering to turn his head, and smiles feebly.

 

“Hello beautiful,” he mumbles, almost delirious, and Peggy gives Steve a sidelong glance, to which he returns a shrug. 

 

“Let’s get you patched up,” Steve tells him, and Tony nods a little, letting Peggy clean the blood from his face gingerly. He only winces a few times as she runs an alcohol-soaked pad over his face, inspecting his injuries. 

 

“Can you stand?”   
  


“Think so.”

 

It takes a few tries and more than a few minutes to get him upright, but Tony manages eventually, one arm slung around Steve’s neck and the other around Peggy’s, but only Steve’s arm around his waist. They walk him over to his car, where he leans heavy on the hood with his head dropped forward as Peggy opens the passenger door. 

 

“Steve,” he whispers, looking up at him with a little smile that really is a smile this time, through and through.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I think,” he starts, looking up at him, “I love you too.”

 

It takes a second for the words to process, and when they do, all Steve can possibly do to respond is to kiss him as gently as possible. It’s only a second, and then he’s pulling back, suddenly aware Peggy’s right next to him. 

 

“Let’s get you home, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Tony says, touching his cheek again before pushing himself off from the car and hobbling around to the door, climbing in gingerly with Steve’s help. He pushes the door shut and turns to look at Peggy, planning on apologizing. She wasn’t supposed to hear that, the tail end of his heat-of-the-moment confession, but she did, and for the first time since this whole mess had started, she looks genuinely happy. 

 

“You’re fine to drive him home?”

 

Steve nods, relief settling over him once again.

 

“I’m glad he’s okay,” she offers, and it strikes Steve that it may well be the nicest thing she’s said about Tony thus far.

 

“Me too,” he says, softly, and Peggy smiles. 

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

With that, she’s gone, and Steve’s getting into the front seat, waiting for her to drive away before he looks at Tony.

 

“Tony, I-”

 

“I meant it,” he says, cutting Steve off before the  _ I’m so sorry  _ can make it out, “when I said I loved you too.”

 

Steve just looks at him, something unfamiliar and warm blossoming in his chest. A part of him wants to take it back, erase the words he’d spilled in a panic, all at once and without fully understanding the weight they hold. It feels stupid, now, to have said something like that to someone he hardly knows. But there’s something he can’t deny about the whole thing, something inexplicably linked to the freedom Tony gives him that not even Peggy has managed to create, and Steve wants to take hold of it and never let go. 

 

“So did I,” he finally tells him, and Tony smiles.

 

“Good.”

 

They leave it at that. Maybe it’ll be okay like this, just the two of them against the whole world. With Tony by his side, it might not be so bad. 

 

“I don’t want to go home,” Tony says after a few long minutes of silence, voice shifting to something darker, more unbidden.

 

“Why not?”

 

“I don’t want to face her,” comes the answer, and Steve knows  _ her _ means the aunt that seemed to threaten to beat him with a soup spoon within a half-second of opening the door the first time he went to Tony’s house, the one that always reminds him just a little of a mother lion, always ready to pounce. It makes sense that he would be afraid to face her covered in blood and bruises. 

 

“We don’t have to, not yet.”

 

Tony nods. He reaches out, wincing a little, and Steve takes his hand, weaving their fingers together. One-handed, he starts the car, happy to leave the field behind. They drive in relative silence, holding on to each other as the weight of the afternoon presses them into their seats, until they make it to their spot all the way up in the woods. Steve parks and turns the car off before he looks at Tony again, the sight of his battered face and blood-matted hair making him want to cry all over again. He’s going between hearing his fist collide with Tony’s face and the soft  _ I love you too _ that came only a little while afterwards, wondering how the hell someone can love a person after they’ve done that to them. He thinks about how Marcus punched him in the face and how, as soon as the shock wore off, Steve knew deep in his gut he would do it again and again and again if it meant keeping Tony safe, and things make a little more sense after that.

 

That doesn’t make it any less terrifying. Here he is, sitting in a car next to someone he just helped beat the shit out of, and he’s sitting here thinking he’s in love. There’s got to be something seriously wrong with him, Steve’s thinking, because there’s no way this is what it’s supposed to be like. All the movies are so much smoother, so much less dark and violent and unsure. Of course, they’re all about a boy and a girl, so of course this is going to be different, but this can’t be right, regardless

 

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

 

Tony’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts.

 

“Huh? Oh, nothing.”

 

It’s a lie, but that’s not important. Tony doesn’t need to hear any of it right now. They’re quiet for a little while longer, alternating between stealing glances at each other and looking everywhere but.

 

“Help me into the back?”

 

Steve tries to protest, but by the time he gets half a word out, Tony’s already trying to shove himself between the seats. It’s slow going, but he’s determined, and despite it probably hurting a hell of a lot to get there, he finally manages to land in the back seat with a little grunt. After giving him a moment to settle and get out of the way, Steve follows, sliding into the seat next to him. It’s not long before Tony’s leaning into him, and a few minutes of careful rearranging later, he’s practically laying in Steve’s lap. He looks down at him, eyes catching on the marks he distinctly remembers making, the sound of his fist on Tony’s face echoing sick and disconcerting in his head. 

 

“Hey, hey,” Tony says, putting a hand on his cheek to bring Steve back to earth, “don’t go all weepy on me now, tough guy.”

 

Steve smiles a little at the nickname, laying a hand over Tony’s and leaning into the touch just a bit.

 

“I’m sorry I had to hit you,” he whispers, hoping Tony doesn’t remark on how many times he did. Marcus would’ve made him keep going anyways, it was better to just get it all over with before he could lose his nerve. 

 

Tony just smiles, thumb tracing Steve’s cheekbone.

 

“I’ve been thinking about what Marcus said.”

 

“Which part?”

 

He tries not to sound afraid. Nothing good can come from this conversation, not if it involves Marcus and what happened out at the field. 

 

“The boyfriend part.”

 

_ Oh _ . Here’s the second half of that one-two punch. Steve swallows around the lump that’s made a reappearance in his throat.

 

“What about it?”

 

“Well, it doesn’t sound so bad, right?”

 

This definitely isn’t happening right now. Steve wants to pinch himself until he wakes up, wants to drag himself out of whatever ass-backwards dream he’s in the middle of, because there’s no way Tony fucking Stark, bad-boy aficionado and all-around gorgeous, jaw-droppingly  _ amazing _ person that Steve has somehow gotten into the good graces of, is asking him out within two hours of having the shit beaten out of him in part  _ by Steve _ . It just isn’t happening. There’s no way. 

 

“I, uh,” Steve mumbles, feeling his face go all red and hot, half out of sheer shock and the other half out of something like fear, and then Tony’s talking again.

 

“What I’m saying is,” he says, wearing a smile like he knows he’s got this one in the bag, “would you maybe want to be my boyfriend?”

 

“You want the guy that just punched you in the face to be your boyfriend?”

 

He can’t help it. It still feels like this whole thing definitely isn’t real, Tony in his lap and the softness in his eyes when he looks at him and everything. There’s more than enough of him screaming  _ don’t do it _ to make him almost want to run, but then Tony’s breaking into that grin that melts his resolve all over again.

 

“Wouldn’t want it any other way,” he answers, no big deal, just like that. 

 

Steve looks at him for a moment in pure shock, the actuality of all of it only just starting to sink in. The voice trying to tell him it’s a bad idea is drowning underneath the look on Tony’s face, like Steve is the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and a part of him thinks Tony might be the bes and worst t thing that’s ever happened to him

 

“Yeah,” he says, “I think I can do that.”

 

“Great. Now come here so I can kiss my boyfriend.”

 

Tony’s urging him down. Not one to say no to an offer like that despite any reservations he might still have, Steve leans down to kiss him, soft and gentle, still acutely aware of the bruises littering his face and no doubt his body. It doesn’t last very long, but when they look at each other again, he can’t keep the smile off his face. 

 

“I should get you home,” Steve mumbles, only a little bit because he wants a way out so he can get some space to think, and immediately regrets it as Tony’s face falls.

 

“Probably,” he replies, urging Steve down for another kiss.

 

Before long, they’re starting the painstakingly slow (and painful, on Tony’s part), climb back up to the front seat, expletive-laced and truly disastrous for the whole unaffected facade Steve’s been keeping up. It’s over soon enough, though, and then he’s following the winding road back down to Tony’s house. When they pull into the driveway, the house is dark, and Tony makes an interested little humming sound, what Steve guesses is relief at not having to deal with his aunt. He hurries out of the car and circles around to open Tony’s door for him, looping an arm under his shoulders and virtually picking him up. They make it inside impressively quickly, considering Tony’s all but a dead weight that Steve has to haul through the door. As soon as he shoves the front door closed with his foot, Tony manages to find his feet and stand on his own, looping his arms around Steve’s neck to kiss him right there in the middle of the entryway.

 

He knows it’s a bad idea, especially when his aunt could walk in on them at any second, and it only adds to the uneasy feeling in his gut. He isn’t about to stop, though, so he holds Tony firmly around the waist and kisses him back, closing his eyes and hoping to god nothing goes wrong. He has to break away eventually, because it seems that Tony has no plans to. Ignoring Tony’s disgruntled little sound, Steve starts leading him to the stairs, aiming to get him upstairs and in bed before they push their luck too far and end up running into his aunt. There’s been just about enough excitement for one day. Actually getting up the stairs takes a lot longer than expected, in part because Steve keeps having to pry Tony off him every two steps, and when they finally make it upstairs, it’s right to his room. The door clicks shut half a second before Steve is being dragged towards the bed, however weakly, and it takes just about all of his self-control to stop Tony in his tracks.

 

“Clothes,” he chides, gently, tugging at them hem of Tony’s shirt, “they’re dirty.”

 

The pout is evident even in the dark, but it quickly disappears as Steve helps him out of his clothes, leaving everything but his boxers in a pile at the foot of the bed. It takes even more self-control to keep those on, plus lots of telling himself  _ now is not the time _ and thinking about his grandmother, which does a pretty good job of keeping him under control. With impressively little complaining, Steve manages to get Tony into bed and properly tucked in. He leans down to kiss him on the forehead, smoothing his hair back and looking at him with a smile.  _ Boyfriend _ , he thinks, the word not sounding just as good as it is worrying. 

 

“Where’s your phone?”

 

Around a yawn, Tony says something that sounds vaguely like  _ kitchen _ , then follows it up with a  _ why _ ?

 

“I’m gonna go call Peggy so she can give me a ride home,” he whispers, and Tony frowns.

 

“Stay,” he says, reaching up to snag his fingers in Steve’s shirt and pull just a little.

 

“I have to go to school in the morning,” he tries to reason, putting a hand on Tony’s but making no move to pull it off him.

 

“Says who?”

 

Steve sits on the edge of his bed, trying to convince himself and Tony at the same time that he really does have to go.

 

“Well, the principal, for one. Besides, I can’t miss practice. Marcus will kill me.”

 

“ _ Fuck _ Marcus.” 

 

“Yeah, that’s not really on my bucket list.”

 

Steve wrinkles his nose, putting on the most disgusted face he can possibly muster, and Tony takes one look at it before bursting into a round of childish giggles that lasts all of three seconds before he’s groaning and holding his ribs. Steve touches his shoulder, face shifting to worry, but Tony gives him a smile as soon as he can breathe properly again, so he leans down and catches his mouth in a fleeting kiss  _ goodbye  _ before standing up. 

 

“Steve,” comes the whisper, sharp and pleading and  _ please don’t leave me alone _ . He turns, looks back at Tony and finds fear written all over his face, the realest he’s seen all day. It breaks something inside of him loose until it rattles around his insides when he takes a breath, and that’s all he needs to convince him to stay, so he kicks off his shoes and pants and joins Tony in bed, slipping under the covers to lay next to him. 

 

“Thank you,” he breathes, and Steve almost misses it,  _ almost _ . 

 

“Of course,” he breathes back, knowing all too well what that fear is like and not wanting him to have to weather a second of it alone.

 

Tony slides into his arms, all careful movements and sharp little exhales that Steve knows means something hurts. He closes the gap and wraps his arm around him, lets him roll so he’s pressed right up against him, their legs all mixed up together and Tony’s face buried in his chest. It’s so perfect he’s suddenly overwhelmed by an urge to cry for no other reason than how  _ happy _ he is to be able to be this close to somebody like this. They settle into the quiet rhythm of each other’s breathing before long, all wrapped up in each other.

 

“Hey,” Steve whispers, breaking the silence, and Tony shifts back far enough to look at him, “I wanna ask you something.”

 

“Well, I beat you to the boyfriend thing, so unless you’re proposing, you can’t really one-up me,” Tony whispers back, making Steve smile before he remembers what he wants to ask. It’s been eating him all day, and holding it in any longer might just drive him mad.

 

“What did you mean when you said you’d had it worse?”

 

The question immediately falls flat, ruining the mood. Tony stiffens just enough for Steve to notice it and want to pick the words out of the air one by one until it was like he’d never said anything. Then, he relaxes into Steve’s arms, brows knitting together and a little sigh leaving him.

 

“I used to get beat on a lot,” he answers, but Steve can tell there’s more to the story, so he doesn’t say anything. Eventually, Tony gets the hint to keep talking, and he does, however hesitantly.

 

“A few kids in my old town found out I was gay, and things got ugly. My parents were really worried about it at first, but after a while they figured it was just boys being boys. Then-”

 

He cuts off there, a surge of emotion choking his voice into nothingness. Steve wants to hug him tight and never let go, but he just looks at Tony, waiting to hear the rest of it. It takes a second, and a few steadying breaths, but then he’s looking back at Steve with the same calm expression under his face.

 

“Then they found out.”

 

He wants to reach out and pull him closer, say  _ I’m so sorry _ for the thousandth time, but before he can say anything-

 

“They kicked me out.”

 

One-two, he drops the bomb on Steve like it’s all water under the bridge. 

 

“It’s fine, really. They were assholes anyways.”

 

It’s the same voice he was using before, the one that tries to make everything sound okay, but Steve can see right through it.

 

“I’m so sorry, Tony.”

 

They’re back to silence again. Tony nestles back into his chest, but it’s not the same. Steve can’t stop thinking about the few seconds of panic when Tony didn’t move, when he wasn’t  _ Tony _ at all but just a pile of skin and bones and blood, not the person that broke down all his defenses and managed to get him here, in bed, saying things like  _ I love you _ and  _ yes, I’ll be your boyfriend _ . He can’t stop picturing the way he’d just left him there, laying sprawled in the field for the crows to find, how he would’ve been picked clean by the next morning had Steve not come back for him, maybe never to be found. Can’t stop thinking of all the stories he’s heard, all the jokes and the sideways laughter, how easily it could’ve been  _ him _ .

 

“I thought you were dead,” he whispers, unable to hold it in any longer, his voice flooded with fear.

 

“What?”

 

Tony pulls back to look at him again, the sight of his bruised and swollen face only making everything worse.

 

“You weren’t moving,” Steve says, Tony’s limp body all he can see, “I thought you were dead.”

 

There’s a hand on his cheek. It’s warm and soft and very much alive, and it’s enough to bring him most of the way back to the real world. 

 

“You think you’re getting rid of me that easy?”

 

Despite himself, Steve laughs a little at that, doing his best to focus on the here and now instead of what might have been. 

 

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

 

“Never been better.”

 

He knows it’s not true in the slightest, but it’s a little reassuring anyway. Tony smiles, thumb running across his cheekbone, and then he’s nestling back into Steve’s chest, his breathing soon evening out. It takes him longer to fall asleep than he would’ve liked - what with having to fend off more than a few worries that he’s done something horribly wrong by letting himself get this close to someone like Tony, like  _ him _ , especially in the place they live. Eventually, though, Steve’s thoughts turn to happier things, like the fact that he’ll finally be able to escape the eyes that follow him everywhere he goes and all their hatred in only a few months, and then he’s slipping off to sleep, holding Tony close.


	6. your arms, they remind me of home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, tiny warning for this chapter - there's some mentions of violence, but most of it is very vague & quick. there's a few punches thrown right at the end, but nothing too bad.

Tony’s impressively good at keeping a straight face, even when Steve’s cleaning the particularly nasty cut over his eye, doing his best to wipe off the last of the blood that’s dried to his skin. He’s sitting calmly next to the sink with his hands clasped in his lap, the indents from his nails digging into his skin the only real indications that he’s not completely unbothered by the whole ordeal. It’s taken the better part of a half-hour to clean him up properly, mostly because he’d refused to take a shower if Steve wasn’t joining him (an offer he only _barely_ managed to decline, citing the extremely high risk of injury, to which Tony just laughed and told him he’d ‘been there, done that’ and that made Steve both feel terrible and turn bright red).

 

“There,” he says, stepping back and tossing the piece of gauze into the garbage.

 

“Thanks,” Tony replies, staying put and looking at Steve, eyebrows starting to go places that mean things he’s not sure he wants to think about right now.

 

“Breakfast?”

 

Steve makes the offer in an attempt to get Tony to stop looking at him like that. It also gives him an excuse to look somewhere other than his bruised, battered face for long enough to just maybe get rid of the heavy feeling in the bottom of his stomach, so it’s a win-win situation, really.

 

“Not hungry,” Tony sighs, looping his arms around Steve’s neck with only a little discomfort flitting across his face.

 

“Tony-”

 

He gets exactly one word out before Tony’s stopping him with a kiss, which he’s started doing every time Steve tries to talk some reason into him. It’s much more effective than he’d like to admit - within a second he’s gingerly wrapping his arms around Tony’s torso and virtually melting into him. He’d been trying to keep it together for the better part of the morning, which Tony’s made extraordinarily hard to do, but after the accidentally-saying-things-he-shouldn’t-have-said fiasco yesterday, Steve wants to keep a tighter handle on himself. Of course, that being said, having someone as persistent as Tony doing his absolute best to work him up has caused nothing but trouble for his resolve, and now here he is, finding himself kissing Tony like he plans to do all sorts of filthy things to him, right there on the bathroom counter. A hand threads itself into his hair and urges him to _get on with it, already_ or something similarly Tony-esque that means something beyond kissing, and he manages to pull himself back to his senses. Steve backs off, determined to keep his promise to himself to let Tony heal at least a little before doing absolutely anything that could cause him more pain than he’s already (needlessly) endured.

 

“I’m not breakable, you know.”

 

Tony’s got a displeased look on his face, all angry eyebrows and a little frown that’s more of a pout than anything else.

 

“I know,” Steve says, swallowing the apology he wants to make.

 

He huffs, looking at Steve for a moment before he slips off the counter with a badly-concealed wince, one hand going to his ribs, fingers spread over the ugly bruising covering his side.

 

“You really should go get checked out,” Steve tells him, for the millionth time since they’d woken up, swallowing hard and looking back up at his face, which isn’t much better.

 

“I’m _fine_ , really. Peachy. Never been better, actually.”

 

As if to prove his point, he saunters out of the bathroom in perfect Tony fashion, with far more hip movement than necessary. Steve only stares for a second, then he’s turning back and hurriedly cleaning up the messy pile of pseudo-medical supplies they’d made on the other side of the counter, before following Tony back into his room.

 

“Took you long enough.”

 

He’s waiting by the bed, wearing a smile and Steve’s shirt. The sight gives him pause for a minute, long enough that he has to argue himself out of pulling Tony into bed right then and there. He clears his throat, doing his best not to stare, and walks over.

 

“You like it?”

 

He does a little turn, albeit slowly, but all Steve can see is the marks on what skin his clothes don’t cover. Tony must notice, because he clicks his tongue and frowns a little.

 

“You’re doing it again,” he tells him.

 

“Doing what?”

 

“The guilty thing.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Steve doesn’t really know what to say to that. Is he really expected not to feel more than a little guilty about the whole thing? There’s not much he can do to keep himself from feeling nothing _but_ guilt every time he looks at Tony, let alone thinks about all the things he could’ve done to fix the situation instead of giving Marcus exactly what he wanted.

 

“Steve.”

 

Tony steps close, looking him in the eye. He tries (and fails) to keep the frown off his face, ending up with something like a grimace.

 

“I know it’s deeply upsetting that my gorgeous face got a little messed up and all, but _really_ , it’s fine.”

 

An interesting sound that’s halfway a sob, halfway a laugh forces its way out of his chest.

 

“You didn’t have to do it,” Steve manages, wishing he could turn back time enough to force Tony _not_ to do it.

 

“Nope. But I did.”

 

“Why? You could’ve told me to deal with it. I could’ve found a way out.”

 

“You’re not the one that punched Marcus in the face,” Tony tells him, “they were out for blood. If they didn’t get it then, they would’ve gotten it some other time, and it could’ve been worse.”

 

Steve is speechless. Tony didn’t have to stand there and take it. He could’ve - should’ve - told Steve to deal with it himself, settle the debt like a man, but instead he just nodded and smiled and played along with it, even though it meant coming away with a black eye and bruises mottling his torso.

 

“There was nothing you could’ve done. I had it coming.”

 

He’s spinning out, tires burning until smoke fills him from top to bottom, bitter and unrelenting. Tony takes him by the arm and pulls him to sit on the bed, waiting patiently for the words he’s trying to get out to surface.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, because all of this is backwards. Tony’s not supposed to be the one comforting him. It’s all his fault in the first place. All of this happened because Tony decided to stand up for him, and then Steve got it in his head to drag him into the mess that’s his life.

 

“Hey,” Tony’s saying, distant and muffled, and taking Steve by either side of his face, “look at me.”

 

So he does, wishing he could flinch away from the discolored skin and the swelling and the cut running above his eyebrow.

 

“I signed my own death warrant the second I decided to deck that asshole. This wasn’t your fault.”

 

_Wasn’t your fault_. The words echo in his head for a minute before they stick, sucking up some of the guilt that’s been eating at him, but not all of it.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says, again, except this time it’s more of an _I’m sorry for being like this_ than it is an _I’m sorry you got hurt because of me_.

 

“I’m glad you were there.”

 

That startles Steve enough for him to snap out of the spiral he was locked into half a second ago.

 

“You’re a brave guy,” he says, and _brave_ doesn’t exactly sound like Steve, but he lets it slide because Tony’s still talking, “and you came back for me.”

 

He doesn’t know what to say to that. Part of him wants to think that Tony’s just saying it, that he doesn’t really think any of it, but the way he’s looking at Steve says otherwise, something in his eyes warm and genuine enough to make him want to believe him.

 

“How ‘bout breakfast?”

 

“Yeah,” Steve says, only a little shaky, “breakfast.”

 

They take their time going downstairs. Steve spends at least half of it asking if Tony’s _really sure_ his aunt isn’t going to be home any time soon, and the other half worrying about not letting him fall down the stairs. By the time they make it to the kitchen, though, Steve’s almost free of all the worry and guilt that he’d been wrapped up in before, only the tiniest traces left in the bottom of his gut. He ignores them in favor of scavenging Tony’s intimidatingly large kitchen for proper pancake-making supplies, laying them out on the island one by one. Somewhere between mixing everything in the bowl (and fending off Tony, who won’t stop trying to sneak a fingerful of batter) and heating the pan, they fall back into a flow of easy banter, all smiles and stolen chocolate chips. It’s comfortable, despite the little twinge of guilt Steve gets every time he looks over at the bruises on Tony’s face.

 

“Get your hand away from the bowl!”

 

Steve smacks Tony’s hand away with the spatula again, successfully defending the batter for the umpteenth time.

 

“You’re no fun, you know that?”

 

Tony pouts at him, crossing his arms and instead reaching for the bag of chocolate chips next to him. Steve shakes his head but says nothing, knowing he’s not going to win that fight, flipping the pancake in the pan instead.

 

“So,” Tony starts between mouthfuls of chocolate, “forgive me if there’s a super-simple explanation that I’m completely missing here, but-” another handful, pause, Steve puts the pancake on top of the growing pile on the plate next to him, “-why do you hang around with those assholes so much? They don’t really fit the bill of great friends.”

 

He resists the urge to laugh. Yeah, Marcus and the rest of the team are about as far from friends as it’s possible for people to be. Steve pours another scoop of batter into the pan, then reaches over for the bag of chocolate.

 

“I need football to get a scholarship,” he tells him with a shrug, pouring a few chips into his palm, “I can’t spend the rest of my life here, you know?”

 

Tony nods, takes the chocolate back from him.

 

“I wanna go somewhere I don’t have to worry about everyone knowing everything about me.”

 

“Somewhere you don’t need a fake girlfriend so you can have a secret boyfriend on the side that you have to beat up to keep the peace?”

 

Covering a wince, Steve eats the chocolate and reaches for the spatula again. He’s only just starting to warm up to the whole boyfriend thing a little. Mostly, he’s not thinking about it, but he’s warming up all the same.

 

“Yeah,” he answers, frowning down at the pan.

 

“I don’t blame you.”

 

They’re back to tense silence, only the sound of Tony emptying the rest of the chocolate into his mouth keeping them company. Steve flips the pancake, doing his best to force away the memory of his fist hitting Tony’s face. He looks back up just in time to catch Tony dipping his finger into the bowl and only manages to hit his arm this time, leaving a greasy splotch on his skin that he gleefully ignores in favor of sticking the batter-covered finger into his mouth. Steve watches in real time as his face goes from smug to disgusted, quickly followed by a noise similar to a cat hacking up a hairball.

 

“What the fuck? Why is that disgusting?”

 

He looks betrayed, frowning at the bowl like it’d just told him that his dog never really moved away to live on a farm.

 

“Told you to stay away from the bowl.”

 

Steve flips the pancake in the pan, grinning down at it. Tony huffs, reaching for the empty bag of chocolate chips and cursing when he remembers he finished them off.

 

“That package was full, you know.”

 

Grumbling, Tony tosses the plastic aside.

 

“Never underestimate a man and his love of chocolate.”

 

When he puts the cooked pancake on the plate - which he put on the other side of the stove from Tony for a _reason_ \- Steve catches Tony eyeing it and shakes his head.

 

“I’m almost done.”

 

He seems happy enough to resign himself to waiting as Steve scrapes the last of the batter out of the bowl and pours it into the pan, letting it cook while he takes the now-empty bowl to the sink and fills it with water. When he turns back around, Tony’s got half a pancake in one hand and a guilty smile on his face.

 

“You’re ridiculous,” Steve tells him, picking up the spatula to wave it mock-threateningly, which probably doesn’t work out very well considering he’s wearing a pink floral apron and a generous dusting of flour. Tony just smiles and takes another bite.

 

“But you love it.”

 

Steve rolls his eyes and flips the pancake over.

 

“Yeah,” he sighs, looking up in time to see Tony shoving the last of it in his mouth, “I do.”

 

It feels weird to say out loud so casually, even if only suggested in response to a tease from Tony. He’s said to to Peggy, and his mom, but not like this. It’s not an entirely bad feeling, though, all things considered. Tony reaches over to grab another pancake right as he’s setting the last one on top of the pile and this time Steve picks up the pan and holds it up, raising his eyebrows to say _don’t even think about it, pal._ Tony backs off immediately, raising both hands in surrender. Steve moves the pan to the other side of the stove and shuts it off, picking up the plate piled high with fluffy breakfast goodness. Next to him, Tony slides off the counter with a soft noise, his eyebrows pulled tight together until he’s all the way on his feet, at which point he smiles as if to tell Steve _don’t worry, I’m fine_.

 

Several minutes later, Steve is watching Tony dig into what appears to be a mountain of whipped cream drenched in generous helpings of maple syrup and chocolate sauce with a sort of bemused smile. He just shakes his head and cuts into his own stack of pancakes, figuring that now is not the time to scold him for engaging in high-level sugar therapy, especially when the whole point of making breakfast was to get his mind off the reason Tony would need immense amounts of junk food. So far, not going too well. Figuring Tony might be onto something, Steve occupies himself by eating almost on pace with him, and ends up marginally succeeding at distracting himself. They’re finished in record time, and as soon as both sets of silverware hit the table, Steve pops up like a rather anxious meerkat and scoops both plates and cutlery up, taking them to the sink to be washed. Tony’s quite a few steps behind (complete with dramatic groaning when Steve doesn’t help him up from his chair) and by the time he makes it over, Steve’s elbow-deep in sudsy water.

 

“I like this look on you,” Tony says, tugging at the lace-trimmed edge of the apron he’d neglected to take off. He pauses, thinking, and then seems to reconsider: “not as much as I like the spandex, though.”

 

Steve feels his cheeks heat up and sets to scrubbing the pan twice as hard to make sure it’s _definitely_ clean. Clearly displeased with the amount of attention he’s getting (which is close to none), Tony huffs and moves closer, sliding an arm around Steve’s waist, pressing himself firmly to his back. The pan has never been cleaner in its life, but Steve keeps scrubbing because Tony’s roaming hand is currently making his brain short-circuit. If there’s a right way to react in this kind of situation, Steve can’t for the life of him figure it out, so he just scrubs and scrubs until even Tony notices and speaks up, albeit right into his ear and with clear intentions that don’t relate to dishes in any way, shape, or form.

 

“There are a lot of things we could be doing right now, and dishes _really_ aren’t top of the list.”

 

Steve clears his throat and focuses on thoroughly rinsing the pan, determined to complete the task at hand despite Tony’s hand attempting to find its way down the front of the loose-fitting pants he’d borrowed from him earlier. His patience is dangerously near running out, though, and by the time Tony’s working on slipping his fingers nice and slow down across the skin of his lower torso, Steve’s about had it with dishes and just drops the pan back into the dirty pile, barely giving the running water time to rinse the leftover suds from his arms before he’s shutting it off and grabbing for the towel hanging neatly nearby. It ends up on the floor in his haste to turn around, heart running quick and hard and particularly antsy to beat its way straight out of his ribcage.

 

“That’s the spirit,” Tony half-sighs, stretching up to kiss him, and Steve feels himself melt like chocolate on the tongue, soft and sweet in a matter of seconds. He tastes overwhelmingly like sugar, part syrup and part whipped cream, and Steve doesn’t mind one bit.

 

As all things do when Tony’s hands are roaming and insistent, they move quickly: the floury apron gets slung over the bannister on their way upstairs, Steve’s shirt leaves Tony behind in favor of making a neat pile just inside his door, which one of them (he doesn’t know for sure which) kicks shut. There’s a minute of slow shuffling in which Tony seems to remember he’s battered and that moving tends to hurt, but then they’re both settling into his bed gingerly and shirtless, too busy getting lost in each other all over again to pay much attention to anything else. Ever-careful to avoid tender spots, Steve’s hands map the bruise-marked expanses of Tony’s skin, starting at his chest, then moving to his back, finally finding his way south with a noise of approval to urge them on. Despite several more such noises, though, Steve keeps everything properly above-clothing, much to Tony’s evident despair.

 

It’s forgiven quickly enough when Steve figures out that kissing other parts of Tony - face-adjacent only, of course - is just as rewarding, earning him a satisfied hand threaded into his hair and a loose, pliable, smiling Tony half-sprawled on him. They carry on in much the same fashion for what feels like an eternity and a half (not that Steve’s complaining; quite the opposite, really), ending up slotted together so comfortably their ends are all caught up in the other’s beginnings and vice-versa, ignoring the steady-brightening light in favor of switching off between laying still and comfortable and lazy kissing. When they’re not moving slow and steady against each other, Steve thinks about the rollercoaster he’s been unwittingly strapped into: highs made up of Tony’s skin and the press of his lips, lows made up of the hollow sound he made when he hit the ground, bloody and looking at Steve with that awful thousand-yard stare. He’s switching between them fast enough it’s starting to give him emotional whiplash, all the feelings inside him getting mucked up in each other and just confusing him more. The high parts keep him thinking about how, if the boyfriend thing means more mornings feeling like he’s boiling over with the warmth Tony starts in his chest, it can’t be bad at all. The lows, though - they never fail to remind him of how all of this is a death sentence the second someone slips and Marcus finds out, and how inevitable the crash-and-burn part of the joyride always is.

 

Tony shifts and distracts Steve from the racket in his head, palm sliding warm and soft down his side and effectively pressing mute on all of it. They’re back to moving again, eyes closed and hands making like magnets and pulling them closer and closer. Quite suddenly, there’s no room for anything but the physical sensations to pour into Steve and fill him up, and that’s more than okay by him. He’s starting to really relax into it, the rhythm and feeling becoming familiar. A hand captures his wrist right as Steve feels a smile spread on Tony’s face, sparking nerves in the bottom of his stomach, only for a second.

 

“Steve,” Tony starts, that airy breathlessness to his voice making him want to agree with whatever he says next, “do you remember that night, in my car?”

 

“Which one?”

 

He’s fairly sure he’s got a decent idea of what Tony’s talking about, but this question could be leading any number of ways, so he asks just to be sure. The only answer he gets is a hum and a kiss just below his jawline, where Tony’s somehow figured out it’s easiest to make his self-control waver. It’s punctuated by a daring hand making a pass down the inside of one thigh, and in response, Steve makes a noise he didn’t even know he was capable of making.

 

“Remember what I said-“ a hint of teeth on his pulse point gets him to suck in a lungful of air- “when you told me I could leave?”

 

_Oh._ That’s not the direction Steve had guessed Tony was going to go. A pitfall opens up in his stomach, yawning and gnashing its teeth.

 

“No,” he admits, too busy trying to fight the fog the hand on his thigh is curling around his brain. It’s the answer Tony was expecting, apparently, because he hardly lets him get the word out before he’s talking again, quiet and sincere.

 

“I said I wanted to stay with you.”

 

His hand slips up, palm flat against his stomach, carving a straight line from navel to neck, and Steve’s breath freezes when the slightest hint of chewed-short nails graze his throat.

 

“I meant it,” Tony tells him, hand coming up to cup Steve’s cheek, “I don’t regret punching Marcus for you. Not even a little.”

 

Steve blinks, trying to find something on Tony’s face to prove he’s not serious, because there’s no way someone can seriously think he’s worth the beating Tony’d endured. He comes up empty, pierced through the chest by the calmness in his eyes and the warmth it fills him with.

 

“I’m glad I met you,” Steve whispers without meaning to, the words tumbling from brain to mouth without any semblance of a filter, “I’m glad I can be myself around you.”

 

Tony smiles, the little lines by his eyes crinkling up.

 

“Me too.”

 

Then, Tony kisses him again, deliberate and Steve knows it means _I love you_ even though they’ve only said it out loud once in the midst of panic. He kisses him back with every ounce of _I love you for making me free_ he can muster, because that’s the best he can do. Tony doesn’t seem to mind, relaxing against him like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be, and for a moment, Steve genuinely believes it.

 

A door slams outside, shattering the moment into a thousand tiny pieces. Tony tenses up, coiling tight like a spring, and Steve freezes in place, his body going cold all over.

 

“Shit,” Tony whispers, strained and panicked. Steve feels the same way. Either it’s Peggy, coming to yell at him for missing school and making it obvious he and Tony are together, or it’s his aunt. He’s not sure which one is worse. Neither of them move as the front door opens, then closes, the whole world hanging on a thread. Minutes go by of nothing but tense silence, stretching on endlessly into each other until there’s a muffled voice from downstairs.

 

“Tony?”

 

He doesn’t say anything, but Steve can hear his breathing go all funny. His eyes are shut tight, brows drawn in over them like he’s praying as hard as possible that she leaves them alone.

 

“Tony, are you home?”

 

It sounds clearer, like she’s on her way upstairs. Steve feels like he’s falling, tumbling though darkness just waiting to hit ground, barely able to breathe.

 

She knocks.

 

“Tony?”

 

“Give me a minute,” he yells back, staring at the doorknob like he’s ready to bolt if it turns. Steve is frozen, staring wide-eyed at the door and hoping with every bit of faith he has left that she doesn’t decide to just walk in.

 

Tony rolls out of the bed, pulling on pants in record time. By the time Steve realizes what’s going on, he’s getting yanked out of bed, a shirt that doesn’t belong to him thrust into his arms with a look that tells him to move faster. His aunt knocks again, a little quieter this time, and Steve yanks the shirt over his head and dives for the couch on the other side of the room, doing his best to lean back nonchalantly when Tony opens the door.

 

“Why are you ho- _what in God’s name happened to your face_?”

 

Her voice goes shrill and Steve and Tony wince in tandem, except Tony covers it with an apologetic smile and a casual lean against the doorframe.

 

“Hi, Aunt Virginia,” he says, somehow both guilty and _would you please keep your voice down_.

 

“ _Anthony Edward Stark_ ,” she says, threateningly, marching him backwards into his room and only stopping when she catches sight of Steve, giving him a smile and a “oh, hello dear,” before rounding back on Tony, “explain yourself right now, young man! Do I need to make a phone call to the principal? If there are kids going after you again-”

 

“No! I mean, uh, I’m fine?”

 

Backtracking, Tony goes from holding his hands up to fend her off to running a hand through his hair sheepishly.

 

“I got into it with a few guys on the football team, is all. I’m fine.”

 

Not even Steve is convinced by that, much less Virginia. She crosses her arms, looks Tony up and down, then looks over at Steve questioningly.

 

“Steve just came by to make sure I was okay,” Tony half-lies, drawing her attention away from what Steve’s sure is a terrified-looking expression on his face.

 

“That’s what doctors are for,” she tells him, crossly, “get dressed.”

 

“C’mon, I said I’m _fine_ -”

 

“No excuses! I’ll believe you when a doctor says the same.”

 

With that, she eyes Steve one more time before marching out of the room. Tony stares after her looking more than a little defeated (but also kind of relieved, which only makes Steve feel better about things a little bit), and waits a solid ten seconds before crossing the room on tiptoe to close the door as gently as possible. Both of them let out a breath as he clicks the lock into place, Tony visibly relaxing.

 

“Well, that didn’t go as badly as it could’ve.”

 

Casting a wary eye back at the door, Tony walks over to Steve, wearing a smile that looks more than a little forced. He stands up to meet him, hugging him the second they’re close enough to touch.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, again, because he really can’t go long without saying it, apparently.

 

“You really need to stop saying that,” Tony mumbles back, face buried in Steve’s shoulder.

 

“I’m-” he starts, then realizes what’s about to come out of his mouth and promptly switches tracks to a miserable- “yeah.”

 

Far sooner than Steve wants to, he lets go of Tony, muttering something about getting dressed and not pissing off his aunt, and he makes a sound that’s close enough to agreement. They switch clothes until nobody is wearing anyone else’s belongings, and then Steve ends up having to help him get his shoes on right, because bending that far makes him hurt badly enough to hiss a curse and come right back up holding his ribs. Surprisingly, it’s Steve that goes for the door first, figuring he should apologize to Tony’s aunt for intruding and start the walk home. It’s not too bad outside, and he’s got on a comfortable pair of shoes, so it’s really not that much of a problem. Tony stops him before he gets there with a hand on his shoulder, turning him around to be met with a firm kiss, hands on either side of his face.

 

“Come with me?”

 

There’s just enough fear edging his voice that Steve has no option but to answer him with another kiss, arms folding around him to say _of course, I don’t know what I was thinking_. It lasts for just long enough for the fluttering warmth to sneak in between his ribs, just a little, but it’s enough to get him to smile and reach for Tony’s hand when he eventually has to turn away to reach for the doorknob again. As soon as it turns, they drop contact like it’d never happened, but they find it again soon after, when Tony pretty blatantly feigns needing Steve’s help to get down the stairs all in one piece.

 

His cheeks go pink when he realizes Tony’s aunt is standing at the front door, watching them with worry creasing her face, but she smiles when she sees Steve looking at her, the sort of world-weary smile that makes the nerves digging cold nails into his spine fade away. As soon as she starts trying to support his weight, Tony brushes away all the hands holding him up and walks just fine to the car, only wincing a little when he tugs open the door. It takes him a few seconds to sit down, nice and slow, and by the time he’s leaning back wearing a hint of a frown and one hand pressed to his ribs, he’s happy to let Steve close the door for him. With relative ease, comparatively, Steve slides into the backseat, and before long, they’re off, making the journey to the hospital two towns over. Nobody says anything for much of the ride. The radio’s on, quietly playing a radio station that reminds him of Tony’s blaring rock music, and Steve wonders distantly if they’ll run into his mom. They pull into the parking lot, and just the sight of the bright red sign indicating the ER is enough to swamp him with guilt again.

 

Tony and his aunt share a look. She reaches over and puts a hand on his shoulder, something unspoken passing between them, and then they’re unloading, then walking Tony up to the doors. Steve feels like he’s drowning the second they walk into the room, even though it’s decently quiet. He stays a few steps behind Virginia and Tony, shifting nervously from foot to foot and trying to resist the urge to turn and run right back out the doors. He barely remembers to follow them when they’re done talking to the nurse behind the counter, too wrapped up in all the memories of the last time he was here. The squeak of the stretcher’s wheels squealing on the floor fill his ears as he drops into the seat next to Tony, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek. _Breathe in, out_. The shouting, the prick of a needle in his arm, his mother leaning over him begging to know who’d done it, who’d beaten him within an inch of his life. That was the worst part of it. Not the actual beating, because the adrenaline kept him going long after he should’ve been on the ground, doing his best to swing despite the circle of fists edging him in, sneering at him, taunting him.

 

Tony’s looking at him. Steve manages a little smile, and it’s strained but enough to get him to stop looking so worried. He imagines it must’ve felt the same for Tony, the copper flooding his mouth and adrenaline making his hands jump and twitch so hard even curling them into fists did nothing to make it stop. How hard his heart was beating, even when it stuttered because he couldn’t open his lungs enough against the battering. He swallows hard, nearly jumping out of his skin when a nurse calls Tony’s name.

 

“Do you want me to go with you?”

 

He shakes his head and offers his aunt a smile, _thanks but no thanks_ , then sharing it with Steve, trying to tell him _I’m okay_ and only failing a little. Then he’s gone, disappeared down a hallway all on his own, leaving Steve bouncing his leg in the uncomfortable waiting room chair next to Virginia, who’s staring down at her hands, folded tight in her lap. She’s quiet for a while, until the silence starts to get unbearable.

 

“Steve, is it?”

 

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

Somehow, he gets the words out without mangling them. Virginia smiles, the lines around her eyes reminding him of Tony’s, only deeper and filled with that weariness that only comes from walking the world long enough to know just how unkind it really is.

 

“Thank you.”

 

Steve looks at her, confused.

 

“For what?”

 

She sighs a little, shifting in her seat, and when she finally answers, there’s a hint of sadness on her voice, despite her smile staying put.

 

“It’s nice to see him with a friend.”

 

_Boy_ friend, he wants to say out loud, but catches himself well before the word even forms on his tongue. It sinks down his throat and lodges itself firmly between his lungs instead, making talking impossible. He smiles at her, ducking his head a little and hoping that’s enough of an answer. She doesn’t say anything else, so he returns his eyes to the floor and resumes sinking back into the cold, bitter feeling that wants to swallow him whole. On the bright side, though: he’s finally figured out where the twinge of fear comes from every time he thinks about Tony and all the secret moments they’ve shared together, especially the _boyfriend_ part of all of it, despite the concept making him want to scream it from the rooftops and then run away to a foreign country with him and never, ever let go.

 

He has something to lose.

 

“That girl you were with,” Virginia starts up again, and Steve thinks briefly she’s trying to distract herself from nerves, or at least fill the uncomfortable silence, not that he minds, really, “what was her name? She seemed quite nice.”

 

“Peggy, ma’am. She is.”

 

“Peggy. Right. Oh, enough with the ma’am this, ma’am that. You can call me Virginia, dear. I don’t bite.”

 

Steve nods, only just catching a _yes ma’am_ before it slips out.

 

“So, Steve, you’re a senior?”

 

He nods again.

 

“What are your plans after graduation?”

 

This is beginning to feel like a sort of interrogation. His palms are sweaty, but wiping them on his legs is too much of an obvious cue that he cares more than a friend that’s ‘just checking in’ should.

 

“Hopefully college. I’m hoping for a football scholarship.”

 

As soon as the word _football_ leaves his mouth, Steve realizes his mistake. Virginia’s face changes almost instantly to suspicion, a frown hinting at the edges of her mouth. She’s got the same crease between her eyebrows that Tony does, and then the same neutral mask takes over, and he wonders for a moment if his entire family looks exactly the same.

 

“Football, hm?”

 

“Yes ma’am,” he grits out, remember Tony’s explanation of having _gotten into it with a few guys on the football team_.

 

“Do you know anything about how this happened?”

 

_This_ is directed over at the hallway Tony disappeared into, drenched with suspicion and a generous helping of _you’d better start talking or we’re really going to have a problem_.

 

“From what I heard, there was an argument. A few guys got pretty banged up,” he lies, hoping she catches on that it’s not a big deal, _just boys being boys_ , even though that’s so far from the truth it very nearly physically hurts to say. Virginia shakes her head, sighing and sinking into her seat a little bit more, muttering something about _teenagers these days_.

 

“Tony’s a tough guy,” Steve says, more to comfort himself than anything else, “he’ll be okay.”

 

“I know,” Virginia answers softly, looking at him with a small smile, “thank you, dear.”

 

They fall into silence again, Steve picking at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt to keep his hands occupied. The wait seems to take forever, time slowing near a dead stop and stretching on and on until finally, _finally_ , a doctor approaches them. Filled to bursting with nervous energy, Steve pops up as soon as Virginia goes to stand, but keeps his distance to let him talk to her. She shakes his hand, thanks him, and he offers a reassuring smile.

 

“Mr. Stark has what appears to be several broken ribs, a minor concussion, and…”

 

He carries on, saying something and bruising and x-rays, and Steve loses the thread of conversation as standing upright becomes his main focus, legs wanting to give out underneath him. It’s the same undercutting feeling of guilt, impossibly overwhelming, and it takes a surprising amount of determination to pull himself out of it in time to catch the tail end of the doctor’s speech.

 

“...with rest, he should make a full recovery.”

 

Virginia nods and thanks him earnestly, though the smile she gives him is pulled tight and uncomfortable, and sits back down. Steve follows her lead, desperately trying to slow the racing of his heart and the _your fault your fault your fault_ echoing in his head. Another eternity passes, time mired down in the sandbags of _leave before you can hurt him more_ tied around Steve’s ankles. He can’t stop thinking about the fear attached to the memory of the words part of him wishes he’d never said, how part of him thinks being afraid for himself is so much better than being afraid to lose whatever it is he and Tony have, the secret bubble of freedom that comes at high cost.

 

Tony’s walking back over to them, waving away a nurse that’s trying to help him. Virginia stands up before Steve processes what’s going on, hugging him gently. He stands up, vaguely hearing the nurse saying something about painkillers, but he’s too busy getting caught directly in Tony’s smile, crooked and just a little hazy. There’s more talking to the front desk, during which Steve and Tony stand quiet, side-by-side. For half a second, right before Virginia turns around, Tony’s fingers brush his, saying _I’m okay_ and _I told you it would be okay_ , and Steve can’t help the smile that spreads across his face as the weights still tied to his limbs start to fade. He’s in a strange not-wholly-there place by the time they make it out to the car again, tired like he’d run a marathon instead of sat in a waiting room for god knows how long.

 

“Do you need a ride home?”

 

Virginia’s looking at him in the rear-view mirror, the question a polite way of saying _I think you’ve intruded enough, young man_ , and Steve swallows his errant thoughts and smiles at her, regurgitating some polite line like _if it wouldn’t be too much trouble_. Tony’s quiet the whole way there, the radio overshadowed every now and then by Steve’s quiet directions. They pull up outside of his dark, empty house, and Tony stirs, sitting up straighter in his seat.

 

“Thanks,” Steve mutters in Virginia’s direction, opening the door before pausing and looking at what he can see of Tony’s shoulder and the side of his head, offering him a gentle, “I can stop by tomorrow after school?”

 

“Yeah,” Tony says, after a second, sounding almost dreamy, and Steve smiles. He leaves it at that, listening to them drive away as he walks up the driveway.

 

* * *

 

By the time Tony’s back in school, rumors about his beatdown have mostly quieted, the gossip mill moving on to bigger and better things that they’ll undoubtedly forget about in a week or two as well. That doesn’t stop the comments from flying across halls after him, though, whispers about the last lingering yellowed patches of skin where angry purple bruises used to be. Steve barely notices them anymore, too used to the person underneath all of the marks and suave confidence he carries himself with - the gentle, snarky, caring person that he loves without a doubt.

 

They’re more careful, now. They share passing glances in the halls and occasional smiles, but nothing beyond that. Steve’s still on shaky standing with the football team, and by no means do either of them need any more conflict. Tony’s been coming to every game so far, though, and never fails to be one of the loudest voices cheering them on. Steve has a sneaking suspicion it’s mostly because he _really_ enjoys looking at a bunch of sweat-drenched guys in spandex. Either way, he’s not complaining, especially not when he finally escapes the team after a win and Tony whisks him away to their spot in the woods, congratulating him in all sorts of ways he goes pink just thinking about. The woods become their sort of heaven, a place to go that nobody else seems to know exists. They stay there well into the winter, clinging to each other for warmth and finding creative ways to generate more body heat, until one of them has the bright idea to bring along a few blankets they never actually end up using for very long.

 

All in all, things could be much, much worse.

 

Marcus flings a french fry across the table, cheering when it lands right in the middle of the pile of ketchup on Pat’s tray. They’ve been waging potato war since they first sat down at the table, and Steve’s glad he’s out of direct line of fire for once. He even managed to get through the entire first half of lunch without any incident at all, eating his cardboard-flavored burger in relative peace. That is, until Drew saunters over, late as all hell and wearing a smug grin. Steve’s mood instantly sours.

 

“Look who it is!”

 

Marcus pauses his assault on the ketchup across the table, grinning as Drew slides into the empty seat next to him. Steve’s feeling a sudden urge to start a fry war of his own, but he knows it’s an awful idea, so he resorts to glaring at the unopened carton of milk in front of him.

 

“Nice going after third period,” Johnny says, equally as smug, holding up his hand for a high-five. Steve’s glare turns nuclear, verging on boiling the milk inside its little box. Drew had tripped Tony in front of half the goddamn senior class, and Steve had been forced to disappear into the crowd in order to keep himself from either rushing to help him up or deck Drew right then and there.

 

“Don’t you think it was a little much?”

 

His outburst quiets the whole table, stopping the spitballing going on between two of the juniors on Pat’s end of the table.

 

“What?”

 

Marcus’ voice is deadly quiet. Steve knows he’s playing right into his hand, finally giving him the challenge he’s been pushing him towards for weeks now.

 

“Tony paid his dues,” Steve says, looking Marcus dead in the eyes, matching his tone. He’d seen how Tony held his ribs and struggled to get back up, pain etched on his face from the weeks-old injuries, “leave the poor dude alone.”

 

Johnny whistles, long and low, and Steve knows he’s being sized up for a fight. He wants it to happen, tired of being pushed around and made the butt of jokes he can’t say anything to because they cut straight to the bone.

 

“Finally standing up for your queer boyfriend, Rogers?”

 

Marcus is smiling, now, egging him on. Steve could care less.

 

“No, I’m standing up to an idiot that doesn’t know when to stop.”

 

His smile disappears.

 

“What did you just call me?”

 

Steve’s grinning, now, adrenaline already starting to fill him with wild, electric confidence.

 

“A fucking idiot.”

 

Marcus stands up all at once, sending his chair tipping over backwards. The whole room goes quiet as Steve stands up, too, shoving his chair back far more dramatically. Fuck it. If they want a scene, they’re going to fucking get one.

 

“Say it again,” he says, daring him to swing first, so Steve does, gleefully. His fist lands square between Marcus’s ribs and sends him half-stepping sideways. The entire team is staring at the two of them, clearly not eager to get involved and end up on the wrong side of someone’s anger. There’s a fraction of a second of stillness, the whole room watching the two size each other up, and then Marcus goes right for his stomach, folding him in half, then a second blow catching him under the jaw, jamming his teeth together, but he knows Marcus can hit harder, so he just steps out of the way and spits on the ground in front of him, ignoring the commotion from the other side of the cafeteria, where someone’s shouting.

 

“I can do this all day,” he taunts, swinging for his face with every intention to hit as hard as he can, except Marcus knocks him off-balance and his punch lands skewed. They exchange a few more blows before Steve gets the air knocked out of him again and goes down hard, choking and wheezing. There’s a second of shocked silence before someone stomps over, then a second body hits the floor and the entire room explodes in uproar.

 

“Get up.”

 

Peggy’s stern voice cuts straight through the commotion. Steve staggers to his feet, only barely able to breathe, and finds her nursing one hand and standing over a crumpled Marcus, who’s holding a clasped hand over what appears to be either a very bloody nose or an incredibly nasty split lip. He doesn’t get much of a chance to see the rest of the team’s reactions, though, because as soon as she gets one hand on his arm, she’s marching him straight out of the cafeteria, where they’re met by a half-annoyed, half-amused looking teacher that proceeds to walk him straight down to the principal’s office.


	7. this is the part where you tell yourself it could always be worse

In retrospect, starting a fight with Marcus was definitely not one of Steve’s better choices. That being said, he doesn’t regret it one bit. Not even when he spends three of his five days of suspension bored out of his skull. It would’ve been all five, but the other two are spent with Tony, who skips school despite Steve’s (weak) protests and makes sure to tell him just how much he enjoyed watching Steve throw the first punch. The whole school is talking about it, according to Peggy, who refuses to say anything on the subject other than that it was a bad idea, but the secretive little smile she has on her face when she brings Steve and Tony dinner one night and finds them reenacting the scene with pillows in the middle of the living room says she’s proud. By the time his suspension expires and he’s allowed to go back, despite the mountain of missing work probably waiting for him, Steve’s just a little excited. He’s not really worried about retaliation from the football team, even though he really should be, logically, but the feeling of walking on air on his way out of the cafeteria hasn’t quite left him entirely. 

 

If all else fails, and he does end up getting cornered into another fight, this time horrendously outmatched, Peggy’s promised to bring down fiery cheer team hell on anyone that so much as threatens him - and with that promise containing some of the downright scariest girls he’s ever come face-to-face with in his seventeen years of life, Steve’s pretty damn sure nobody will touch him. For one, Peggy single-handedly dropped the biggest asshole in a twenty-mile radius - both literally and figuratively - and the girl she’d dragged over to Steve’s house the morning he’s supposed to face the general population again looks like she could kill him with one finger and not so much as break a sweat - the same girl he’s seen Tony walking around with. She introduces her as Natasha, who proceeds to stare him down with her arms crossed like he’s a small prey animal waiting to be ripped to shreds. Even if it’s just the two of them offering their protection, Steve feels like he’s probably safer with them than if he was surrounded by six inches of kevlar. 

 

He ends up in the backseat of Peggy’s car, spending the short ride to school in nervous silence, tuning out their chatting in favor of trying to figure out when and where Marcus is most likely to try and pull his revenge. By the time they pull into the parking lot, he’s come up with only one viable option, and that’s in the locker room after practice the next day, leaving him roughly thirty-six hours to get his affairs in order and say his goodbyes. Hey, it could be worse. Walking into school flanked by Natasha and Peggy feels almost like he’s a celebrity, especially with how people keep cutting glances at him and then turning back to whisper to their friends. They make it to his locker without incident, thankfully, and Peggy leans against the one next to it while he grabs his books, Natasha standing behind her looking like she’s debating who’s ass she’s going to kick first. Steve’s seen her do enough intimidating cheer tricks involving feats of sheer strength that even he couldn’t hope to match that he doesn’t have a single doubt that she can (and will) take anyone down that even looks at her twice. 

 

From there, they walk him to Physics, leaving him at the doorway with a smile from Peggy that says  _ try anything stupid and I’ll break your nose too _ and a curt nod from Natasha that leaves Steve with the impression she might not want to murder him as much as he originally thought. He walks into the classroom, finding it empty, since the first bell hasn’t rung yet, and walks over to his desk, looking down at it with a frown, then to the one behind it, where Marcus sits. Putting himself in the direct line of fire? Yeah,  _ maybe _ not the best idea. Hoping whoever’s seat he takes won’t bother trying to take it back from him, Steve looks around the room, trying to remember who sits where. Behind him, someone clears their throat.

 

“Can I help you?”

 

Coulson is standing there, holding a briefcase and wearing a particularly unhappy expression, probably at finding a student in his classroom earlier than expected. 

 

“Uh,” Steve mumbles, picking a desk on the far side of the room and going for it, “just got here early. Sorry.”

 

He drops his books and slides into the seat without looking up, feeling Coulson’s eyes on him for an uncomfortable few seconds before he hears a sigh, then footsteps, and his desk chair squeaking. There’s a minute or so of relative quiet, the noises from the hallway making it less suffocating than it would be otherwise, then there are more footsteps, and a pile of papers land in front of him.

 

“Here’s the work you missed. I expect it on my desk by Wednesday.”

 

“Yes, sir,” Steve says to his back, only a little startled. The pile is bigger than he expected, but he’s not too worried, considering he’s got Tony around. Without looking at any of it, Steve shoves it in a folder.

 

The bell rings a few minutes later, prompting Steve to look up from the tangled mess of lines he’s been absentmindedly doodling in the margin of his notebook, watching as Coulson gets up and walks to the front of the room, picking up a piece of chalk in preparation for whatever mind-numbingly boring lesson he’s going to teach this time. A few at a time, people start to file into the room, most of them not looking twice at him. He’s only a  _ little _ nervous for Marcus to show up, he keeps telling himself,  _ it can’t be that bad, he won’t try anything _ . 

 

Turns out, he doesn’t do anything except glare at him, and it would be intimidating if Tony weren’t two steps behind him, sliding into the room right as the late bell rings in all his pompous glory. He catches sight of Steve and grins immediately, taking his sweet time sauntering across the room, earning him an irritated look for Coulson. 

 

“Fancy seein’ you here,” he comments, dropping into the seat in front of Steve, who just smiles. He’s about to say something like  _ long time no see _ , which is a blatant lie, because they’d been up half the night together, but Coulson starts calling out attendance, so Tony just gives him a wink before turning around. 

 

Steve proceeds to spend the rest of the class staring at the back of his head and not paying attention one little bit. 

 

* * *

 

“Steve! Over here!”

 

He’s barely two steps into the cafeteria when someone shouts his name. The source becomes obvious two seconds later, when he spots Peggy waving an arm in the air, motioning him over to a table clear across the room from the football team’s table, of which everyone sitting at is eyeing him curiously save Marcus and Drew, who are looking at him like he’s a bug they want to crush. Eager to be as far away from them as possible, Steve accepts the offer happily and walks over, taking the empty seat next to Tony. Natasha’s across from him, with Peggy on one side and a guy he recognizes from one of his classes on the other side, who’s busy carving something into the table with a pocket knife, leaving an an empty seat to Steve’s right. He looks over his shoulder, nervously expecting a projectile to be in midair from the team, but none of them are even looking in his direction anymore.

 

“Don’t worry, if they try anything, I’ll break every bone in their hands,” Natasha says calmly, as casually as one would offer to hold something for you, and Steve looks back at her, startled.

 

“I’ll help,” says the kid next to her, glancing up from what appears to be a half-carved penis.

 

Peggy cuts in, eyeing both of them.

 

“Violence isn’t always the answer, you know.”

 

“Says the one that broke Marcus’s nose,” Natasha fires back, raising an eyebrow.

 

“ _ Again _ ,” Tony adds in, but only Steve is listening, “I did it first.”

 

“I’m just saying, it would take one knife and five minutes to-”

 

“ _ No _ , Clint.” Natasha, Tony, and Peggy say in unison.

 

“But-”

 

“Heads up,” Natasha cuts off his protest with a grin, looking somewhere over Steve’s shoulder. Before he can turn around, someone drops heavily into the seat next to him, setting down what Steve thinks may be the most overloaded lunch tray he’s ever seen, digging in without saying a word. He smells like something overwhelmingly musty, and it takes a minute for him to realize that it’s smoke, the kind he smells outside every party he’s been to.

 

“Hey, Bruce,” Clint says, returning to his carving. Around a mouthful of food, Bruce mumbles a halfhearted  _ hello _ back to him, and everyone shares a look. Once again, Steve feels like he’s three steps behind everyone else. It’s not bad, though, not like being stuck in the middle of some argument about whether or not one girl is hotter than another, or which teacher any given member of the football team would rather stick it in. 

 

Tony bumps his knee into Steve’s, getting his attention. 

 

“Whatcha doin’ tonight?”

 

He’s got a look on his face that makes Steve want to say  _ you _ , but with Peggy’s eyebrows warning him to hold it together in front of the other three, he clears his throat and shrugs. Everyone’s attention is briefly swayed when Natasha steals Clint’s knife and a miniature high-stakes wrestling match breaks out, all but the two of them looking concerned at how quickly the blade is moving between them. They settle down quick enough, though, when Natasha gives him a hard elbow to the ribs and Clint scoots his seat over, holding his side and glaring at her as she picks her nails with the tip. Tony clears his throat, and Steve turns back to look at him.

 

“We’re going to the movies later. Wanna come?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Sweet. We’ll pick you up at six.”

 

That settled, and the knife back in Clint’s hands thanks to a quick maneuver, the conversation picks back up again, Natasha and Peggy talking about skipping practice to catch the movie, Bruce critiquing Clint’s anatomical accuracy. Tony’s knee stays pressed against Steve’s for the rest of lunch, and when the bell rings, he’s only a little sad they can’t ditch their last few classes. 

 

* * *

 

Riding in a car being driven by Natasha is terrifying even if you don’t factor in her ongoing one-handed battle with Clint over the radio station. She stays a minimum of ten miles per hour above the speed limit and flies around corners so fast Steve is positive he’s not gonna make it home without whiplash. He’s crammed into the backseat, Peggy on one side, Tony on the other, listening to the conversation ricochet around the car. It’s sort of intimidating, considering Natasha threatens someone with painful death every few minutes, Clint seems to  _ really _ enjoy encouraging her, and Peggy mostly just sounds terrifying in general, but it’s strangely comforting. From the minute they’d picked him up, Steve had felt like he’d been readily accepted as one of their own without question. It’s nice to not have to feel like he has something to prove.

 

Further thought on the subject becomes incredibly difficult when Tony gets the idea in his head to try and convince Steve to spend the night at his house.

 

“Come on, we can even stop at your place and grab clothes,” he’s whispering in Steve’s ear, one hand on his knee and on the move, “it’ll be fun. Promise.”

 

“I can’t,” he says back, not nearly as quietly, but Natasha and Clint are too busy arguing over which road is faster to get to Peggy’s house to hear him.

 

“Why not?”

 

Steve doesn’t even have to look at Tony to know he’s got a ridiculous pout on his face. His hand is making its way down his thigh uncomfortably slowly, like it’s intended by design to drive him crazy bit by bit.

 

“Tony,” he tries, again, to be firm, and fails horribly. 

 

“Steve,” Tony answers him, hand now making a  _ very _ convincing argument.

 

The two hell-bent on killing everyone in the car have seemingly come to a consensus, because the front has gone unnaturally quiet. Steve swallows hard and tries to breathe in deep through his nose, out through his mouth, attempting to build a cohesive reason for why he actually needs to go home that isn’t  _ my mom will be really worried _ . It’s going shockingly well - meaning, he’s got about half of a sentence all figured out - when Tony straight-up cups him through his jeans, and Steve has to force a cough to cover his startled half-choke, half-groan. Clint turns around to eye them and Tony yanks his hand away immediately, leaving Steve pink-cheeked and wide-eyed, trying to appear normal.

 

“You okay?”

 

“Yeah, I, um, fine, thanks,” he mumbles, earning a raised eyebrow from Peggy that says  _ get a fucking room _ and  _ you two are idiots, I swear _ all at once. Clint just nods and turns back around, hand almost making it to the radio dial before Natasha slaps it away again, reigniting their ongoing Madonna vs. David Bowie argument. When he finally looks back over at Tony, there’s an evil little smirk on his face that makes Steve briefly consider throwing himself out of the moving car.

 

“So,” Tony starts, leaning up against him again, all sorts of buttering him up, “is that a yes?”

 

For the span of an entire tirade from Natasha about how  _ nothing _ will ever top Madonna at the MTV Awards, Steve says nothing. Neither does Tony, actually, because the whole car (except Clint, who’s rolling his eyes so hard Steve is shocked Peggy doesn’t tell him to  _ be careful, or they’ll get stuck like that _ ) is listening to her explosive, over-gesticulated diatribe about her subversion of ideals of female sexuality being the ultimate fuck-you to society. She closes the argument with “and besides, she’s fucking hot,” and Clint goes right back to refuting, letting Steve and Tony fall right back into their own world. 

 

“I didn’t get an answer,” he prods, fingers sneaking under the hem of Steve’s shirt to curl right around the waistband of his pants. If getting someone into his bed is an art, Tony is a goddamn new age Davinci. 

 

“ _ Yes _ ,” he sighs, attempting to make it sound like he’s hesitating even a little and - surprise, surprise - failing entirely. Tony’s grinning next to him, and Steve risks a glance at Peggy to find her giving him the most unimpressed eyebrows he’s ever seen. He smiles and returns a little shrug as if to say  _ sorry? _ and she shakes her head and looks back out the window. Somewhere between anecdotes about gender-fucking pop stars, Tony manages to slip in that he’ll  _ give Steve a ride home, don’t worry about it _ , and when they drop Peggy off and have to keep a middle-seat’s worth of space between them, Steve quickly realizes that Tony’s method of teasing  _ without _ touching him is somehow even worse.

 

By the time Natasha and Clint speed off, barely pausing their fight to say goodbye, Steve is barely restraining himself from jumping Tony right then and there. His aunt doesn’t ask any questions, just waves hello to them from her spot on the couch, wine in one hand and newspaper crossword in the other, and the second they’re safely upstairs, it’s a miracle they manage to make it to Tony’s bed at all. 

 

* * *

 

Despite getting little-to-no sleep and having to wake up at the crack of dawn to race back to his house and grab clothes (and make profuse apologies to his mother, who’d woken up Peggy’s entire family in the small hours of the morning by calling in an attempt to figure out where the  _ hell _ her son had gotten to), Steve walks into school with Tony and Natasha by his side, a smile on his face. His personal guard consisting of various members of the cheer team continue to shadow him throughout the day, shooting down anyone even remotely associated with the football team with impressive death glares that would shrink even the most confident man to a pile of dust, apologetic smiles, and quick exits. His favorite so far is Wanda, who catches up to him right as Clint turns down another hallway to meet Natasha before second period. She actually tries to talk to him, which makes the long walk to the gym less uncomfortable, the danger zone of the locker room only mildly intimidating. 

 

“Well, I have to run to Psychology. See you later!’

 

With that, she’s gone, leaving Steve facing the door all on his own. Not wanting to give someone - specifically anyone that might want him dead at the moment - a chance to come up behind him, he squares his shoulders and marches through into the gym, not stopping until he hits the door of the locker room. He grabs the handle and even gets it halfway turned when a voice stops him, clear across the gym.

 

“Rogers, come here for a minute.”

 

The way Coach says it like he’s already apologizing makes Steve’s blood run cold. He puts a smile on his face, turns, and jogs over to where he’s standing by a rack of basketballs, clipboard tucked under one arm. 

 

“Yeah?”

 

He stops, trying to inject every bit of false confidence into everything he possibly can, from the way he’s standing to the uncomfortably false smile on his face.

 

“Listen, kid, I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this, but…” he trails off, looking down at the floor, then at the door to the gym, then back at Steve, every millisecond of waiting for the other shoe to drop worse than the one before it.

 

“You’re off the team.”

 

The words don’t sink in all the way, not at first.

 

“What?”

 

There’s still a stupid smile on his face, like he doesn’t really believe him, like it’s some sick joke. Coach just shrugs, offers up a sad little smile,  _ tough shit, suck it up _ . 

 

“You can’t play anymore, Rogers,” he says, “it wasn’t my decision.”

 

“No,” he whispers, finally dropping the smile and just staring, watching his only chance at freedom slip right out of his fingers.

 

“Sorry, kid.”

 

Coach claps him on the shoulder, gives a little shake.

 

“Go get changed.”

 

With that, he walks away. Steve stays there for a long, long moment, frozen solid. Just like that, everything he’s been holding onto to keep himself afloat disappeared. That’s what Marcus’s smile meant, that’s what had been lurking behind the sideways looks and malicious smiles every time they’d caught side of him.  _ You’re off the team _ . He should’ve seen it coming.

 

The bell rings, unsticking his feet from the floor, and Steve makes it to the locker room on autopilot. His hands are shaking, even when he curls them into fists and shoves them deep into his pockets, keeps his head down as he shoves his way into the room. They’re waiting for him. He walks into a trap, just like walking over to Coach with a look on his face like he doesn’t know what’s coming. Except this one’s just smiles, the same smiles that say  _ how’s that for a lesson, huh? _ . He tries to tell himself it could’ve been worse, could’ve been so much fucking worse, could’ve ended up with him all alone in the middle of a field, bruised and bloody and broken and left for dead.

 

That would be better than this. Anything would be better than this, being stuck in the same place that’s stolen his life from him, forced him into hiding behind Peggy, and her lies and quick thinking can only carry him so long. He can’t spend the rest of his life here. He just can’t. He’d rather offer himself up on a silver platter to be torn apart piece by piece by everyone that knows how to make it hurt in all the worst ways than live in the shadows forever. It’s a death sentence, but the slow, agonizing kind. He dry-swallows the panic and forces himself to keep moving, keep acting like his insides aren’t ripping themselves up into one big molten mess, barely kept inside his skin. 

 

Gym passes in a blur. Steve’s glad for the running; the rhythmic jarring of his feet against the ground keeping some sort of order inside his head, the burn of his lungs giving him something else to focus on. He lets himself get lost in the quick back-and-forth on the court, shoes squeaking against the floor and ball bouncing from hand to hand. He pretends none of this bothers him: not Coach’s eyes on him, waiting for him to fall apart and let his innards coat the freshly-waxed floor, not Marcus’s dagger-toothed smile and its private threat, its silent message of  _ I know how to ruin you and I’m not going to stop until I’ve done it completely _ , not the way the ball avoids him like a backwards magnet. 

 

The bell rings, and Wanda doesn’t notice his silence. She doesn’t notice how his eyes are like windows with the shades drawn, not lit from behind. Empty. Somewhere else, somewhere other than the hallways full of people already whispering.  _ Did you hear? _ Everyone must know. Everyone that looks at him must see it in the slump of his shoulders, the tension in his step. Steve feels like he’s suffocating under the weight of their eyes.

 

Clint doesn’t notice either. He chalks it up to their lack of familiarity - maybe he thinks this is how Steve always is, quiet and withdrawn and afraid. He’s not wrong, entirely, but Steve wonders how he can’t see the terror leaking out of every gap in his worn, broken-down armor. It doesn’t feel real. Maybe it  _ isn’t _ real, maybe he’ll wake up in his bed and it’s still the middle of the night, still some awful dream he can’t yank himself out of quite yet. He’s falling, the rug has been yanked out from under his feet and there’s nothing underneath him but air. The bell rings again. 

 

Lunch comes and goes and he spends it hidden away in the bathroom on the far end of the school, where nobody can find him, and the near-silence is almost peaceful. Another bell. He makes it to class all on his own this time, stumbling blindly through the halls in what feels like a bull-in-a-china-shop stampede of desperation and mostly fear, but nobody notices. It’s becoming a pattern. Peggy smiles at him from the other side of the room and he returns it, sitting down in his seat. As his hand takes notes his brain doesn’t tell it to, Steve starts to realize he’s split himself right down the middle, the outside running smoothly without direction from his head. It would be terrifying if he wasn’t so preoccupied trying to come up with a way to afford his ticket out. The lottery is out: too high-risk, low-reward. So is selling drugs, because jail is the only thing he can think of that’s worse than being stuck here forever. He can’t come up with much else, so he sinks back into the same mind-numbing panic that’s been burning him alive all day. 

 

Peggy talks to him all the way from one class to the next, saying things he responds to with little mindless sounds that keep her talking, keep her from forcing him to open his mouth and let all his panic spill out and drown everyone in the near vicinity. He has no idea how she doesn’t notice the sirens blaring, the glazed-over expression on his face and the way his feet keep going all out of order only to right themselves just before he stumbles. He doesn’t wait around to find out what Drew might say to him in the library during their shared study hall, what poisoned looks he might throw in Steve’s direction. The freezing air of the parking lot is welcome for how it wakes him up, brings his head back around to focus on the goosebumps rising on his skin. It’s cold out here, the kind that smells like snow is on the way. He finds Tony’s car and sits heavy on the hood and decides he’s going to wait there, because taking another step means feeling like he’s going to collapse right there on the pavement. 

 

By the time the bell rings one last time, Steve is shivering so hard he’s half afraid he might shake himself apart at the seams. His hands went numb and stiff ages ago, the rest of him well on the way there.

 

“Steve?”

 

He twists a little, not trusting himself not to fall right to the ground if he moves much more.

 

“Holy shit, how long have you been out here?”

 

Tony rushes over to him with worry written all over his face. Steve tries to open his mouth to talk and realize he’s too busy shaking to put words together. It’s not even that cold out - and besides, he’s got a decent jacket on - but even when Tony’s pulling away from the school with the heaters on full blast and the blanket from the backseat wrapped around him, Steve can’t seem to stop trembling.

 

“So, what’s with giving yourself hypothermia? ‘Cause I gotta say, there are  _ way _ more romantic ways to show off your undying affection that don’t involve actually dying.”

 

They stop in front of Steve’s house, the car idling to keep the heat on. 

 

“They kicked me off the team,” Steve tells the dashboard, the words that have been brewing in his belly all day finally making the escape up his throat and landing soft between his feet.

 

“They- what?”

 

Tony sounds indignant, like he thinks Steve doesn’t deserve it. He wishes he could think the same.

 

“They can’t just do that!”

 

“They did.”

 

The seal’s been broken, and now he’s verging on spilling everything he’s wanted to say, all the pain and fear and anger he’s kept neatly wrapped up tight inside him since the news had been broken. Tony’s saying something about how he should go to the principal, or maybe the school board, about how it’s all some petty bullshit and he’ll sue them. Steve’s just looking at the dashboard in front of him sadly, wishing he was half as energetic about it. He’s already given up. 

 

“Tony,” he whispers, and the  _ you don’t have to be angry for me _ not making it out, but he seems to get it anyways. 

 

“I’m sorry, Steve.”

 

“It’s okay. They’re assholes, anyways.”

 

“Yeah. They don’t deserve you.”

 

Tony reaches over and puts a hand on his arm, a little smile on his face. Steve tries to smile back and mostly succeeds. It’s easier, with him. Everything is.

 

“Come on, let’s get you inside.”

 

The journey from car to house is brief, and Steve keeps the blanket wrapped tight around himself the whole way. Thankfully, the house is warm, the heat probably left on for him by his mother. It takes Tony only a few minutes to convince him that the best way to heat up is with someone else’s body heat, mostly because Steve keeps trying to tell him he’s fine and that Tony should go home. He insists, though, and before long, they’re laying under all the spare blankets on the couch, pressed tight together to keep from falling off while something neither of them are watching plays on TV. 

 

“What am I supposed to do?”

 

The arm Tony has around him tightens, just long enough to squeeze more words out of him.

 

“I can’t afford to go to college without a scholarship.”

 

“There are other ways,” Tony says, quietly, and Steve wants to be as confident in it as he sounds. With nothing left to say other than an  _ I’m sorry _ that he knows would only earn him another scolding of  _ you have nothing to be sorry for _ , Steve just sighs and closes his eyes, hoping the dragging ache in his bones goes away soon. 

 

* * *

 

Christmas vacation is a welcome break in the dragging monotony of school. Things have been surprisingly easy since he got kicked off the team. There’s a sense of freedom that comes with the knowledge that he doesn’t have to deal with Marcus or Drew or Johnny anymore, and besides, Steve’s learned that keeping his head down and pretending he just doesn’t care is his best line of defense. Nat, Clint, Bruce, Peggy, and Tony are his second-best. They’ve spent the past few weeks drawing him into their little gang - willingly or not, he’s not really sure, but either way, he’s just as much a part of their group when the bell rings to signal the end of the day. Moving as a solid mass, they join the rush for the front door and flood into the parking lot, shoving each other and laughing. They only break apart when Peggy has to get in her car, Tony in his, and Natasha in hers, leaving Clint, Bruce, and Steve to split themselves up accordingly. It doesn’t last long, though: they end up at Tony’s house soon after in a three-car parade of obnoxiously loud music and semi-erratic driving.

 

“If anyone breaks anything, I’m breaking your face!”

 

Tony shouts over the commotion as everyone’s stampeding his front door, excited for the night to come. Virginia left the house to them for the night, giving him and Tony a sly smile before she’d left that morning, leaving them wondering how much she really knows. It’d been cause for more than a little worry on the ride to school, but by the time they got there, they’d already moved on to Steve telling Tony off for his plan to drop mistletoe above Nat and Clint, knowing full well it’d end with a boot somewhere the sun doesn’t shine. 

 

The main priority is raiding the liquor cabinet. Despite Tony’s protests and insistence that his aunt will be  _ very angry _ if she finds out they’ve all been drinking her alcohol, Natasha manages to wrangle an intimidatingly large bottle of vodka, and Bruce assures the rest of the group he’s well-stocked enough to make up for whatever buzz they can’t get from drinking. So they end up in a circle on the floor of the living room, the radio tuned to a pop station blasting something loud and unavoidably a thinly-veiled metaphor to sex. 

 

“I say we toast!”

 

Tony lifts up the bottle he’s stolen back from Nat, already opened.

 

“Here’s to senior year being half-over,” he starts, and takes a sip. The bottle makes its way around the group with various sounds of agreement from each person, and as soon as it’s back in his hand, Tony lifts it up again.

 

“Here’s to not having to put up with violent assholes,” he says, tipping back a generously larger sip this time, and Steve only winces a little. The whole football thing is still a little bit of a sore subject, as is the reference to Tony’s beatdown, despite all the lingering marks having long faded. Once again, the bottle makes its rounds, and then there’s another toast.

 

“Here’s to getting  _ fucking _ drunk,” comes the third one, earning him a round of cheers as he all but chugs enough alcohol to make Steve’s throat sympathy-burn. From there, the party devolves into a mess. Most of it goes by in a blur - there’s an overly competitive match of beer pong, with Nat and Clint on one side, Steve and Tony on the other, Bruce and Peggy watching with varying levels of amusement and exasperation. There’s also loud music, to which a spontaneous dance battle breaks out more times than anyone would willingly admit to, and once, right when the sun is going down, they all brave the cold and snowy porch to join Bruce for a smoke, leaving them all lounging on Tony’s couches in various states of intoxication half an hour later.

 

By some miracle, he and Steve have managed to keep their hands off each other the entire night. They’re even stretched out across entirely different pieces of furniture on opposite sides of the room, a real picture of self-control. Steve’s sprawling across an armchair that’s got this hideous flower print all over it that he keeps tracing with one finger, staring into it like it’s going to whisper the secrets of the universe to him if he can just figure out how to unlock it. Tony, on the other hand, is crowded in with Natasha on one side and Clint on the other, head tilted back, seemingly unaffected by the somewhat-nonsensical argument happening across him. Peggy and Bruce are sharing the other couch, stretched out in an amicable solution that gives both of them room to relax properly. There’s scattered conversation, here and there, but mostly, everyone lets the combination of Bruce’s pot and Tony’s aunt’s vodka do its job, and before long, they’re all out like lights. 

 

Well, all of them save Steve and Tony. 

 

By some miracle, they’re the last ones left standing. Or sitting. Or half-sitting, half-laying, in Steve’s case, but neither of them are too bothered by the specifics when they finally manage to make eye contact. A raised eyebrow and sneaky grin asks if he wants to go upstairs, and Steve responds by standing up so fast all the blood drains from his head and leaves him even more unstable on his feet, vision going all strange and black-spotted for a moment. Tony muffles a giggle behind one hand and leads him out of the room, turning off the lights and leaving the rest of the group to sleep in peace.

 

They fall asleep fully clothed and on top of the covers, curled up together with matching smiles.

 

* * *

 

“Guys, hurry up, the countdown is gonna start soon!”

 

Steve hardly hears Clint’s shout from the kitchen, where he and Nat are trying to make his drink taste less like gasoline. They abandon it in favor of racing each other to the living room to join the rest of the group, barely managing to make it all the way there without tripping over their own feet. Tony turns the music from his stereo system up, drowning out the tinny voice of the announcer on the TV, who’s saying something kitschy about the New Year. There’s still forty seconds left on the clock. Someone starts dancing, drunkenly waving their limbs around until the rest of the group is leaving their drinks on spill-proof surfaces and following suit, laughing and cheering.

 

“Ten!”

 

Only Peggy catches the first count, eyes shining in the light of the TV. 

 

“Nine!” 

 

This one is shouted by the whole group, only a little out of breath. Nat and Clint are holding hands, dancing together.

 

“Eight!” 

 

Bruce is the only one not dancing, focusing on the TV screen with a wild grin on his face.

 

“Seven!”

 

Peggy joins him, holding her glass and laughing at Steve’s uncoordinated attempts at shimmying. 

 

“Six!”

 

Tony grabs Steve’s hand and whirls him around, making everything spin.

 

“Five!”

 

He’s not sure which direction the TV is in anymore, but it doesn’t really matter, because Tony’s got him by both hands and they’re dancing together, smiling so hard it hurts.

 

“Four!”

 

Steve catches the look on Peggy’s face when Bruce tries to get her to dance again, the excitement of the moment irresistible. 

 

“Three!”

 

He’s never felt this light in his life, this free.

 

“Two!”

 

Tony’s grinning at him, tugging him close so they’re almost chest-to-chest.

 

“One!”

 

He’s not sure who kisses who first, but there’s music and cheering coming from the TV and fireworks going off inside his head. 

 

“Happy New Year!”

 

The whole world shrinks down to just the two of them, Tony’s arms around his neck and the music pulsing through the air, the way they’re kissing like the world is ending and it’s the only way they want to go out. 

 

The song fades out, and Steve realizes nobody’s saying anything. He breaks away from Tony, his face going red and panic sparking in his chest as he whips around to find every pair of eyes in the room on him. Peggy looks somewhere between worried and annoyed, Bruce looks startled, and Nat and Clint are both wearing shit-eating grins. Nobody moves. Another song starts up, and Tony breaks the spell to turn it down, the excitement and celebration draining from the room.

 

“Well,” Clint breaks the tension, elbowing Nat in the side, “you owe me five bucks.”

 

“That doesn’t count!”

 

“It so does!”

 

Bruce shrugs and goes back to nursing his drink, completely unbothered. Confused, Steve looks to Peggy, who just shrugs, frown turning into a hint of a smile. Tony touches his arm, and when Steve looks over, he’s downright beaming. Something is blossoming inside him as Nat and Clint continue to fight over who owes who money over the bet Steve and Tony had apparently just decided for them. Nobody cares that they’d kissed when the ball dropped. Nobody so much as batted an eye that it was two boys, loving each other in ways they aren’t supposed to. 

 

Steve kisses Tony again, and for the first time, he doesn’t care who’s looking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a tumblr in case anyone wants to follow me slash send in an ask (or two! or three!) -- catch me at [vystrx](http:/vystrx.tumblr.com)!


	8. at long last

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, this was originally written as a really short add-on scene to the last chapter, but i decided to make real good on the e rating and it turned into... this? i almost don't wanna believe this is the last real chapter. there's a pretty short epilogue left, but other than that, this is it! the happy conclusion to this emotional rollercoaster of a fic.

With spring comes not only warm weather, but Steve’s worries of college, this time vicious and unrelenting. At Tony’s urging, he applies to a few art schools in the city, his panic only mildly assuaged by vague reassurances that they’ll “figure it out”. He doesn’t believe it, not really, but he lets Tony distract him from it most of the time with kisses and promises that it’ll all work out alright, somehow. Sometimes, though, when it’s quiet and dark and he’s thinking too much again, it gets overwhelming.

 

“Steve,” Tony whispers, filling up the silence with the sound of him moving between the sheets, rolling over to push himself up on an elbow and make a face that has Steve swallowing back tears all over again.

 

“I’m okay,” he insists weakly, trying not to let him feel how fast his heart is pounding.  _ It’s just another nightmare _ . 

 

“Talk to me,” Tony argues, not willing to take no for an answer. 

 

“It’s late,” Steve tries to tell him, “go back to sleep,” like it’ll change his mind. It doesn’t.

 

“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

 

There’s a brief battle of wills between Steve’s aversion to telling Tony what’s actually going on inside his head and the concern Tony’s got written all over his face. It’s no surprise to anyone who wins.

 

“What if I don’t get in?”

 

“You will.”

 

“How?”

 

In the dark, his voice sounds so small. Steve closes his eyes and wills away tears, trying desperately to hold onto all the promises Tony’s made him, all the reassurances.

 

“You’re smart,” comes the whisper, so certain it makes his heart ache, “you get good grades. And you’re an amazing artist.”

 

Steve thinks about the packet of drawings he’d sent out, born from hours of staining his hands black with charcoal and too many ripped-up failures to count. He almost says  _ no I’m not _ , but he’s learned by now that Tony refuses to let him say things like that about himself, so he just keeps quiet, opening his eyes to look miserably up at the ceiling instead.

 

“What if I end up stuck here my whole life?”

 

“We’re getting out the second graduation is over.”

 

There’s so much conviction in Tony’s voice it stops the fear boiling in his stomach dead in its tracks. Steve looks at him, finds his eyes full of burning promise that lights him up from the inside out, and finally lets go of the tension he’s been holding on to for what feels like hours now. 

 

“I promise,” Tony whispers, putting a hand on Steve’s cheek, soft and comforting, “no matter what, we’re getting out.”

 

“Okay,” he manages to say around the desperate gratitude filling his throat, and Tony kisses him then, sealing the deal.

 

Steve almost can’t believe it’s real. He wants to pinch himself just in case all of this is a dream, the past six months of his life that have somehow landed him here, in bed with his boyfriend and planning on escaping the people that keep him trapped in a lie. The freedom is the best and worst part of it, the thrill of always knowing they could get caught at any second making it both exhilarating and bone-deep terrifying. But here, in the quiet darkness, there’s just the truth, warm and forgiving and lovely. 

 

“Will you go to sleep now?”

 

Tony smiles, settling down and tucking himself comfortably against Steve. 

 

“Sure,” he says, and Steve wraps an arm around him, burying a smile in his hair. 

 

* * *

 

The mail comes late on Saturdays. It’s almost like karma’s last stand, a little  _ fuck-you _ to the nerves he hasn’t been able to hold inside of him for days now - part terror, part excitement. Everyone had stayed overnight just for this moment, to be around him no matter what the first letter says. They’d promised Steve it would come today, written in clear typeface when they’d sent a flimsy envelope to thank him for his application two months ago. Now, they’re all gathered in the middle of his living room, furniture rearranged to make room for all of them, crowding around a particularly intense game of chess between Tony and Bruce. They’re both sitting with their legs crossed and hands clasped, glaring down at the board like any amount of intense willpower will change the stalemate they’re currently locked in. 

 

“Dude, just move your-”

 

Tony cuts off Clint with an impressively angry shushing sound, not so much as moving a muscle. Nat’s looking between the two of them like they’re about to start a nuclear war with Steve’s house as Ground Zero, Peggy next to her, glancing between the chessboard and the game of solitaire laid out nearby. Steve’s lounging comfortably with his head on Tony’s leg and a book in his hand that he’d stopped reading ages ago in favor of stealing looks up at his boyfriend and waiting to kiss him whether he wins or loses. He wants to jump up and look out the window every time he hears a car drive by, but his nervous pacing had driven everyone crazy earlier, so he stays where he is, doing his best to wrangle his nerves. The arm above his face shifts, then moves, reaching out to pick up one of the pieces. Everyone leans in just a little to watch the play, eyes dancing between Tony and Bruce and the little black figure he’s got pinched between two fingers, hovering over the board. Nobody breathes. Tony’s eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly, and then the piece makes contact with the board and a tiny hint of a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. Without even looking at the rest of the pieces, Steve knows he’s won.

 

Wearing a confident smile, Bruce picks up a piece without thinking about it for a second and slides it sideways, the little twitch of Tony’s eyebrow indicating he’s fallen right into a carefully-laid trap. He leans back, one hand finding Steve’s and lacing their fingers together.  _ Victory _ . 

 

“Checkmate.”

 

Bruce looks back down at the board, suddenly realizing his error and promptly letting out an exasperated groan.

 

“Dammit! I was so close!”

 

Clint, glaring at the board silently, passes a five-dollar bill to Natasha, who’s smirking at him. Peggy’s looking out the window, but Steve doesn’t think anything of it, too busy propping himself up to kiss Tony properly. He ends up in Tony’s lap, somehow, arms looped around his neck, kissing him with a punch-drunk smile, the rest of the group chattering excitedly now that they’re not obligated to be quiet for concentration’s sake. 

 

“Mail’s here.”

 

Peggy’s voice cuts right through all of it, calm and steady despite the fact that she’d just announced what might as well be the second coming of Christ. Before anyone else realizes what’s going on, Steve’s up and halfway to the front door already, throwing it open and damn near running outside before they catch up with him, not giving a single shit that he’s barefoot and only wearing threadbare pajama pants. He stops short in front of the mailbox, staring at its door and realizing, quite suddenly, that he’s scared absolutely fucking shitless of what might be inside. It takes catching sight of all five of his best friends jostling to stand at the front of the pack, waiting for him to take the letter, to get him to actually open the little door and pull out the three envelopes inside.

 

He walks back up to the house slowly, staring down at the letter on top, addressed to one  _ Steven Grant Rogers _ . His heart is in his throat, fluttering nervously and verging on choking him out entirely, barely any air at all making into its lungs, what little breath he manages to get all high-pitched and nervous. The group parts right down the middle as he approaches, leaving clear passage back into the house. Steve doesn’t look up from the envelope the whole way, moving in a daze until he hits the couch, where he sits down hard, holding it between both hands and staring with wide eyes. There’s movement, and a little bit of whispering, and then he’s surrounded again. Peggy takes the other two letters from him, leaving him with just his future trapped inside thin, flimsy paper. 

 

“Open it,” Tony says, nudging him, debatably more excited than anyone there. 

 

“Yeah, open it!”

 

A chorus of agreements follow, encouraging. Steve flips the envelope over, slides a finger under the flap, and tears it free in one long motion. Everyone’s holding their breath again. Tony’s hand is on his arm, squeezing gently. He takes a slow, deep breath and pulls the folded letter from the envelope, letting it fall to the ground, discarded and unimportant.

 

_ Dear Mr. Rogers, _

_ Congratulations! _

 

The world hangs in perfect balance, right on the edge of shattering into a million pieces. This is it: real, tangible proof that he’s getting out, and he’s holding it in his hands. It’s all so overwhelming that he can’t move, can’t speak, can’t breathe.

 

“What does it say?”

 

Peggy’s voice is gentle, calm,  _ we’re here for you _ . Steve looks up at her, eyes brimming over with tears, and breaks into a grin so wide his face might just split in two.

 

“I got in,” he whispers, and the group explodes in cheers. He’s dragged up by the arm and crushed in a hug, the letter clutched in one hand and held carefully above it all. Steve can hardly find his voice for a while, too busy reveling in the fact that it’s  _ really happening _ , he’s  _ going to college _ . The group hug breaks apart and Peggy takes the paper from him with a knowing smile, putting it somewhere it won’t be crumpled just in time for Tony to wrap both arms around him, kissing him fiercely. 

 

When he breaks away, Steve realizes his cheeks are just the slightest bit wet. He looks at the people surrounding him, all the smiling faces that had just watched him kiss the boy he’s pretty  _ damn _ sure he’s head-over-fucking-heels in love with, and almost -  _ almost _ \- doesn’t want to leave it behind.

 

* * *

 

“Drive safe!”

 

Peggy pulls away from the curb with a wave, leaving Steve and Tony standing alone on the side of the road, hands clasped tight together. His entire body feels like it’s buzzing, the excitement of his acceptance letter still filling him with electricity even hours later. The impromptu party at Tony’s ended relatively early, with everyone packing into Nat and Peggy’s cars before midnight to be carted home. Virginia’s spending another night in the city, something about an overload of paperwork and covering for someone else, which means they have the house entirely to themselves. It’s a fact they certainly haven’t forgotten about, even as they stand in the grass, enjoying the warm spring air. It’s still got a little bit of a bite to it, but that’s just an excuse to press close to each other in order to conserve body heat. Steve definitely isn’t complaining.

 

“So,” Tony starts, an edge of tease on his voice, “I think we should celebrate.”

 

“We’ve been celebrating all day,” Steve reminds him, playing coy with a little smile.

 

“Is that a challenge?”

 

“Maybe it is,” he counters with a lifted shoulder, “if you can catch me.”

 

Before the words are all the way out of his mouth, Steve’s bolting. He couldn’t care less if it’s childish and ridiculous - if he doesn’t get the energy out somehow, he feels like he might explode. Before he rounds the side of the house, he catches Tony calling him something along the lines of a  _ little shit _ , but if the footsteps chasing after him are any indication, he doesn’t mean it much. Steve pulls a half-lap around the house, because frankly it’s too large for even him to want to run all the way around this late at night, and launches himself right over the railing to the porch, grinning at Tony’s curse and fumbling with the gate. In the time it takes for him to even make it to the gate, Steve’s already got the porch door flung open, and before Tony can get close enough to grab him, he’s making a run for it into the house, swinging first through the dining room and into the kitchen, then booking it across the entryway to the living room, where he’s finally cornered, stuck against the wall with a couch between them. 

 

They’re both breathing hard, wearing matching grins. Steve looks right into Tony’s eyes, finds his own blazing energy reflected right back at him, and fakes left. He falls for it, lunging sideways just in time for Steve to put all his strength into a flying leap to the right, clearing the couch and hitting the ground running. Behind him, Tony shouts another expletive and very nearly catches the back of his shirt, but Steve jumps the first two stairs and gets enough of a lead on him to make it all the way to the bedroom with enough time to make it clear to the other side of the room before Tony staggers through the door, very nearly wheezing, pinching a cramp in his side.

 

“You’re a fucking asshole,” he manages between gasps for air, leaning back against the wall to catch his breath. Steve just laughs, only a little breathless. Who knew running laps for Coach would do him this kind of good? 

 

When he can breathe right again, Tony straightens up and crosses the room, going right for his stereo system with a determined look on his face. Steve doubles back to the door, closing it and clicking the lock into place,  _ just in case _ . Music starts up, pulsing and full of fast guitar riffs and louds drums, so  _ Tony _ that it makes him laugh all over again. 

 

“C’mere,” Tony grunts, meeting him in the middle of the open floor and kissing him hard, both of them still just a little out of breath, hearts pounding wildly. The music only adds to it, a heady rush that he belatedly recognizes as the CD he’d given Tony for Christmas, and by the time he puts two and two together the bed’s finding the backs of his knees and he goes down, hard. 

 

There’s a break in the kissing that lasts long enough for them to scramble up the bed until Steve’s spine meets the headboard, slamming it into the wall for what he suspects may not be the last time tonight. Tony deposits himself firmly in his lap as soon as he’s settled, kissing him hungrily again, one hand curling into his hair and the other into the front of his shirt, tugging like he intends to rip it right off Steve’s body. There’s nothing gentle about it, nothing hesitant or unsure, just heat and skin and all the dirty noises Tony keeps making, and  _ god _ he fucking loves it. 

 

When they’re like this, pressed so tight together neither of them can breathe right, kissing like their lives depend on it, absolutely nothing else matters. Steve’s hands drag up Tony’s back, palms flat against his shirt, fingers spread wide to cover as much real estate as possible. He returns the gesture down Steve’s neck with the littlest hint of nails and it yanks a noise from him, midway between a groan and a curse that Tony swallows eagerly, hand falling further to find the hem of his shirt and tug up, forcing them apart. It comes off and goes flying backwards, out of sight, out of mind, with Tony’s right behind it. Steve doesn’t waste a second looking, just dives right in and goes for Tony’s neck, covering it with open-mouthed kisses, aiming for all the spots he’s learned in order to drive him crazy, getting a hand tight in his hair for his efforts. 

 

“ _ Steve _ ,” Tony whispers, already hoarse, and he answers with a hint of teeth. He comes up for air and barely gets a breath in his lungs before he’s yanked up by the hair into a kiss, searing hot and muffling his appreciative sound. They’re moving together, now, Tony rolling his hips down onto him, and it takes Steve a few seconds to realize he’s on beat with the fucking music, because  _ of course he is _ , and then he can’t help but laugh. Tony stops almost instantly, pulling away, brows knit together and concern written all over his face.

 

“What? Am I- is this okay?”

 

He sounds so nervous that Steve wants to kiss him quiet,  _ of course this is okay _ , but he’s still trying to stop a giggle in its tracks, buoyed by all the day’s excitement. 

 

“You’re perfect,” he says, meaning it earnestly, lifting a hand to cup his cheek and hold him there, “ _ this _ is perfect.”

 

Tony leans into his touch, looking less worried, but still not entirely convinced.

 

“I can’t believe I got this lucky.”

 

He smiles, doubts soothed, and leans forward to kiss Steve again, startlingly sweet. 

 

“I’m so proud of you,” Tony says, quietly, heat flooding back into his voice, “I’ve been thinking about this all night.”

 

Steve’s chest flutters, face flushing at the tug in his gut  _ that _ voice always gives him.

 

“Wanna show you how proud I am,” Tony continues against the skin of his neck, breath ghosting hot across it, compounded with a heavy, solid roll of his hips, “that okay?”

 

He gives him his answer in the form of pulling him up into a kiss, hard and bordering on needy. Tony kisses him back just as surely, slipping back into his rhythm to grind down on him, the contact electrifying even through so many layers of fabric. 

 

“Tony-”

 

“Pants,” he says, not even close to a suggestion, and Steve’s more than happy to comply. Tony slips out of his lap, the sudden lack of contact leaving him cold and wanting, but only long enough for both of them to discard the rest of their clothes, and then they’re colliding all over again, hot and insistent, skin on skin on skin. It occurs to him, briefly, that they’ve only done this a few times, and nerves prickle at the base of his spine at the reminder, but Steve takes a deep breath and focuses instead on how Tony’s taking the time to really kiss him now, one hand on his jaw and the other flat on his chest. 

 

Then there’s a hand wrapping around both of them, loose and only guiding as Tony’s hips do the work, sliding slow and filthy against him, and Steve isn’t thinking about much of anything anymore. Neither of them are rushing. He runs a hand up Tony’s side, feeling his ribs shift as he breathes in, and looks up right as his hand moves, twists just right and gets Steve to gasp out his name. 

 

“I wanna try something,” Tony says, and Steve almost misses it as the music rises into a crescendo, cymbals crashing over a guitar solo. Tony doesn’t give him much time to respond, instead leaning forward to tongue at the skin just below his jaw, letting him close enough for his whisper to be heard perfectly.

 

“I want you to fuck me.”

 

He’s heard Tony talk like this before, only once, when Steve was on his knees with his mouth full of him, and that memory alone steals his breath entirely before he puts together what Tony’s actually saying. It’s already hard to think through how hard he is, especially with the way Tony’s still moving like he’s hell-bent on pulling Steve to pieces underneath him.

 

“God,  _ yes _ ,” he whispers, rasping and barely able to convey how much he wants it. The second the words are out of his mouth, Tony’s leaning sideways, reaching for something Steve doesn’t look over to watch him find. There’s a pop and the hand around him disappears, and he’s about to complain before the little bottle in Tony’s hand is snapped shut and discarded and then he’s reaching backwards, going still, eyes falling shut as he concentrates on something. The corner of his mouth twitches, and Steve realizes he’s got a finger in himself, hand moving slow and careful. He wants to kiss him, leave marks scattered all over his chest that only the two of them will know are there, but Steve can’t move, too busy watching Tony’s face slowly loosen into a lazy smile, eyes opening after a moment. 

 

He looks right into Steve’s eyes as he keeps his hand going, slowly devolving from composed and sultry to his hips twitching forward ever so slightly, little noises coming on each breath out. Steve’s holding him by the hips, mostly for the contact, because he feels like he might go crazy without it, so hard it hurts. Steve can see Tony’s thighs straining to keep himself up, drinking in everything he can see in the moonlight filtering in through the window. He watches Tony’s movements speed up as he works himself faster, eyes falling shut again, and Steve barely even realizes he’s hardly breathing, stunned silent by the obscene picture balanced above his lap. The longer it goes, the antsier he gets, eager to get his hands on Tony in any way possible just to be the one making him damn near  _ whine _ like this. 

 

“Okay,” Tony gasps, after what feels like forever, pulling his hand away and reaching for the bottle again, pouring more of the clear stuff into his hand before capping it again, and Steve’s heart skips a beat at the look on his face - shy, nervous. Tony reaches down and grabs him, working his hand over him until he’s slick from base to tip, and holds him there, looking up with a wicked grin on his face.

 

“You ready?”

 

It’s all he can do to nod, voice lost in the way his heart is pounding. Tony sinks down and Steve damn near cries out at it, even though he’s barely gotten anywhere. His face is tight again, almost pained, and his breath’s gone all strained, but he keeps going, little by little. The feeling is so intense Steve’s glad for the pace, because if there was any more stimulation, he’d lose it right then and there.

 

“Fuck,” he chokes out, doing his best to keep as still as possible to let Tony go as slow as he needs to, “ _ fuck _ , Tony-”

 

He makes it all the way and settles with his ass in Steve’s lap, both of them frozen with the feeling of it. Tony’s breathing hard through his nose, eyes shut tight.

 

“Have you done this before?”

 

It’s not exactly the sexiest thing he could say - far from it, really - but Tony opens his eyes and gives him a little sheepish smile anyways.

 

“I’ve tried, before. By myself. Thought it wasn’t bad,” he’s talking in half-sentences, sounding winded, and Steve doesn’t blame him one bit, “but  _ this _ \- this is- wow.”

 

“Yeah,” Steve mumbles, face bright red, glad he’s not the only one overwhelmed. He goes to say something else, meaning to tell him how incredible it feels for him, too, but Tony shifts and the only thing that comes out is a strangled  _ oh _ , thin and wavering. 

 

“This okay?”

 

He asks it almost cautiously, like he can’t tell by the way Steve is all but gaping at him that his entire body is filled with white-hot electricity, that it’s all he can do to keep from thrusting up into him. 

 

“More than okay,” he gasps, the words coming out mangled because Tony’s moving again, hips testing a slow roll, “ _ god _ , Tony,  _ fuck _ -”

 

Tony lets out a shaky breath, the tail end of it carrying something a heartbeat away from turning into a moan. He settles on a pace, moving so slow Steve’s convinced it’s meant to ruin him. It only lasts a few beats, though, because Steve loses patience quickly and reaches up to pull him into a kiss, his other hand curling around to Tony’s back to pull him even closer. The change of angle makes him arch up, just enough to let Steve hear the choked-off whine he makes, and that’s the last straw for his self-control. 

 

Careful not to hurt him, Steve moves his hips just a little at first, gauging Tony’s reaction. Satisfied with the low, strained sound he gets and the way Tony kisses him, desperate and messy, Steve does it again, this time giving him a real thrust, slow and measured, then again, and again, until he’s fucking into him steadily, one hand holding tight to his hip. From there, they find a rhythm, and before long, Tony’s leaning back again, throwing his head back to fill the room with his moans, unabashed and the hottest fucking thing Steve’s ever heard. He’s meeting every one of Steve’s thrusts, the rhythm awkward and fumbling at times when they don’t get it quite right, but more often than not, it’s deliciously  _ perfect _ . 

 

“Steve,  _ shit _ , feels so fuckin’ good,  _ fuck _ -”

 

Steve’s not going to last very much longer if things keep up like this, not with the way Tony’s moaning his name so obscenely. He’s breathing hard, doing his best to focus on figuring out exactly how to keep getting Tony to cry out like he does every so often, his hips twitching and nails biting into skin where he’s holding onto Steve’s legs for support. Tony reaches down to jerk himself off, and he pushes his hand away to do it himself, the throaty moan he gets in response only spurring him on. Everything about him tightens, making the heat around Steve feel even better, and he cries out. 

 

“Don’t stop, holy  _ shit _ , Steve!”

 

He’s saying Tony’s name over and over like a goddamn prayer, gasping it to the high heavens as his eyes shut tight of their own accord, hips stuttering and the last threads holding him back snapping as Tony comes so hard his thighs tremble where they’re pinned around his hips, squeezing Steve tight enough to take him right over the edge with him. 

 

They keep moving until the world stops shaking, until they’re both left spent and gasping, boneless. Tony opens his eyes and looks down at him, hair wild and face flushed, and Steve just smiles, lazy and warm. 

 

“I love you,” he mumbles, and Tony leans down to kiss him to say the same, not caring that he’s spreading his mess to both of their chests. 

 

“We’re disgusting.”

 

Steve whispers it to him as soon as he realizes the sheets are sticking to him and there’s some of whatever the hell Tony had been using all over both of their thighs, not to mention how much they’re both sweating.

 

“Shower?” Tony offers it with a smile, and Steve gladly takes him up on it. It takes them a while to disentangle themselves, Steve pulling out of him with only a little groan from both of them, and he almost laughs at how offended Tony looks when he realizes that standing right isn’t exactly comfortable. They make it to the shower eventually, after stumbling blindly through the dark to turn off the suddenly too-loud music, glad for the warm water and how quickly it washes them clean. There’s only one towel in the bathroom, as Steve finds out much to his despair when he shuts the water off only to realizes Tony’s already taken it and wrapped it around himself with a cheeky smirk, hair dripping into his face. 

 

“You’re an ass.”

 

Tony just blows him a kiss, drying himself off and walking out of the bathroom, only moderately bow-legged. Steve’s hot on his heels, making a pit stop in the hall closet to dig out a fresh towel before following him back to his room, stifling a yawn. He finds Tony looking at the bed with his arms crossed and a frown on his face. Well, to be specific, he’s looking at the still-obvious damp spot on the bed, where the sheets are all twisted up. Steve flushes just looking at it, clearing his throat in an attempt to dispel the not-so-faint memory, because he’s much too tired to get worked up again. 

 

“We have to change the sheets,” Tony says, sounding both petulant and resigned at the same time. Steve just sighs, wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed and pass out. He imagines Tony feels much the same, especially after his theatrical yawns the entire time they were showering.

 

“Are there more in the closet?”

 

Tony nods. Steve walks back out into the hall to dig through the linen closet in search of a sheet that looks big enough to fit Tony’s bed. He finds one, eventually, buried at the bottom of an intimidatingly large pile of floral-printed material, and takes it back with him. As it turns out, two teenagers, both bone-deep exhausted and possessing little-to-no knowledge on how to actually change a fitted sheet attempting to do so well past midnight is a recipe for disaster. It takes multiple attempts, lots of complaining (mostly on Tony’s part) and laughing when the sheet pops off the corner they’d just put it on (mostly on Steve’s part) - but they manage. Nearly ten minutes later, they end up cuddling together in the middle of the bed, happy to be able to finally lay down. 

 

“Hey, Steve?”

 

“Hm?”

 

He opens his eyes to find Tony looking at him, face doing that  _ thing _ that makes him nearly unreadable. It sets him on edge almost immediately, because nothing good comes after that face. 

 

“I almost forgot. I have a present for you.”

 

“A present,” he repeats, somewhat doubtfully. He’s not sure there’s much more Tony can possibly give him.

 

“Mm-hmm. You have to promise something, though.”

 

“That sounds like a trap.”

 

Tony rolls his eyes, making Steve smile.

 

“Promise you’re not gonna say no.”

 

“Do I get to know what my present is first?”

 

“Just…” he trails off, that wiped-clean expression returning, this time with just a hint of… fear, maybe? “Trust me.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Steve agrees mostly just to stop him making that face, because it’s pulling at his heartstrings in ways that are less than nice. Tony nods, face relaxing just a little. He’s quiet for a minute, like he’s considering what he’s about to say.

 

“I’m paying for your college.”

 

That’s not what he was expecting. Steve’s not really sure what he  _ was _ expecting, but that’s definitely not it. 

 

“You’re… what? No, I can’t let you do that.”

 

“You promised.”

 

“Tony, you-”

 

“Steve.”

 

Firmly, Tony shuts him up, everything about him screaming that he’s absolutely dead serious.

 

“It’s my parents’ money. It’s like… some sort of guilty conscience paycheck.  _ Sorry for kicking you out ‘cuz you’re gay, here’s a few thousand dollars a month to shut you up _ .”

 

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything, just looks at Tony like he wishes he could erase all the pain from his voice with his eyes. 

 

“I can’t think of anything else I’d rather spend it on.”

 

“What about your college?”

 

“I’m not going.”

 

“ _ What _ ? Tony, that’s ridiculous, you’re the smartest person I know! You-”

 

“ _ Steve _ .”

 

Once again, Tony shuts him up, raising his eyebrows to say  _ you’re not changing my mind, no matter how hard you try _ .

 

“My dad knows people. He might hate my guts, but he’d rather have a queer for a son than a failure. I’ll find a job.”

 

Steve can’t find anything to say yet again. There’s so much sadness in Tony’s eyes that it hurts to look at, but he can’t bring himself to look away. 

 

“Let me do this for you,” he says, voice dropping to a whisper, and Steve’s heart physically aches, “please?”

 

“Okay,” he whispers back, and despite how much he doesn’t want Tony to spend  _ his _ money on him like this, it feels like the weight of worry that’s been looming over him since he got cut from the team has been entirely lifted from him.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Thank  _ you _ ,” Steve says, meaning it with his whole heart. He doesn’t know how else to explain how happy he is, how thankful, so he just kisses him, warm and soft and  _ I don’t know what I’d do without you _ . He can feel Tony smiling into it, and it only makes his heart feel more like it’s about to burst. 

 

“Can we go to sleep now?”

 

Tony says it around a yawn, mimicking his earlier bathroom dramatics, and Steve smiles, letting him snuggle into his chest again.

 

“I’m not already asleep? Are you sure this isn’t a dream?”

 

To answer, Tony pinches his side,  _ hard _ . Steve yelps, reminiscent of a disturbed Chihuahua, and Tony muffles his laugh in the pillow.

 

“Nope, not dreaming.”

 

* * *

 

“Anthony Stark.”

 

Steve watches Tony cross the stage in his blue cap and gown, absolutely beaming. He shakes hands with the principal and takes his diploma, then crosses to the other side of the stage, pausing to look out on the sea of tasseled caps looking back at him. Somehow, his eyes find Steve’s, and he smiles. Then he’s being hurried off the stage by a bored-looking woman in an uncomfortable-looking dress, and he makes a show of sauntering down the stairs at his own damn pace, taking his sweet time to get back to his seat in the row of folding chairs set up in the middle of the football field, two rows behind Steve and a little to the right. Natasha nudges him, sitting to his left with her legs crossed, wearing ungodly high heels that he’d questioned how she even managed to stand in, let alone cross a field with. When he looks over, she’s grinning, defiantly wearing the red lipstick Clint had given her the day before as a joke. They’re calling out names still, one after another in boring monotone. Like good students, the class sits there until they reach the end of the list, the last three to graduate fidgeting to one side of the stage. Then two. Then one. 

 

Then the principal steps to the microphone, and the air is thick with excitement.

 

“Congratulations, Class of 1987!”

 

Before he finishes saying it, there are caps flying into the air, cheers drowning everything else out. The order of the seats are abandoned entirely as soon as the last cap hits the ground, most of them well before, and despite teachers and parent volunteers desperately trying to keep the calm, all hell breaks loose. Somehow, in the middle of all of it, Nat and Steve stay together, braving the crowd to find Bruce and Clint, who’d ended up next to each other almost in the front row. Peggy waves at the four of them from the middle of a mob of her cheer-team friends, flanked by Wanda, and Nat excuses herself to join them and say her goodbyes to the underclass girls with mascara rolling down their cheeks. Clint watches her navigate the grass in her stilettos with a smile, which Bruce only makes fun of when Nat’s out of earshot. For a moment, it’s just the four boys, Tony eyeing Steve like he wants to drive away and celebrate on their own. 

 

Steve  _ almost _ suggests doing exactly that right before his mother makes it through the throng of graduates and throws her arms around his neck, congratulating him as loudly as she’s capable. 

 

* * *

 

“When can I take this thing off?”

 

He motions to the piece of material tied around his eyes, effectively preventing him from seeing where they’re going. Tony chides him to  _ be patient _ and grabs the hand he’d pointed at the blindfold with, lacing their fingers together as he drives. Steve sighs and sinks into the seat, resigning himself to whatever surprise he’s cooked up. By the time they park, though, the music turning off with the car, he knows exactly where they are. He’s got the turns leading up to their place in the woods memorized well enough he can get there in his sleep, blindfold or not.

 

“You can take it off now.”

 

Steve grabs the tail end and pulls the thing off his face, tossing it into the backseat with a grunt. If this is the surprise, then the whole buildup was just theatrics, all the winking and  _ wait until you see it _ . Figures. Tony’s smiling at him, eyes shining in the light of the sunset they can see through the clearing in the trees, covering the sky in fast-fading shades of pink and orange. With a creak and a loud buzz that sounds more than a little unhealthy, the top starts to fold back, settling into its proper spot after a few long seconds, leaving the car open to the air and the dusky light. The cicadas are buzzing loud enough for the silence to be comfortable, ambient, even, and even it were dead quiet, Steve knows he’d be just as happy sitting there, holding Tony’s hand loosely and looking up at the sky as it grows dark. It’s peaceful. Calm, in a way his life hadn’t felt until Tony’d walked into it and turned the whole thing on its head. 

 

“We should get comfortable,” Tony breaks the silence, murmuring the suggestion with a hint of a grin pulling at his lips, “gonna be here a while.”

 

It would be so much easier to just get out and walk around, but old habits die hard. First Tony slips through the gap in the seats, then Steve, landing with a now-practiced grace, slotting next to him like a piece in a puzzle. A perfect fit. Tony stretches an arm around him, pulls him in close to his side. Steve leans into him happily, kicking his feet up on the center console and looking back up to the sky. 

 

“Remember the first time we came out here?”

 

Tony shifts a little, settling further into the seat and letting out a slow sigh, arm tightening just a little around him. 

 

“The first time you kissed me,” he continues, talking to the rust-dark color the sky’s gone. “I had no idea what to think. I was so scared.”

 

“Me too.”

 

He looks up. Tony has a little smile on his face, one edged with the far-away look of someone tangled in memories.

 

“I thought for  _ sure _ I’d just signed my death warrant.”

 

“Look at us now.”

 

Tony hums and looks down at Steve, eyes full of nothing but warmth. 

 

“Thank you,” Steve whispers, “for everything.”

 

“Of course,” he whispers back, and kisses him, soft and sweet. 

 

An explosion makes them both jump. Steve stifles a laugh, looking up at the sky just in time to catch the last bit of the firework fading into smoke. 

 

“You know, when I was a little kid, my mom used to take me down to the park every year to watch the fireworks.”

 

Another one explodes, this time bright blue. 

 

“She’d bring one of those cakes from the bakery down on main street, the ice cream ones, and she’d get them to write out ‘Happy Birthday’ on it even though it cost extra.”

 

Two go off, back-to-back, painting the world with their flashbang color.

 

“Right as the fireworks started to go off, she’d cut into the cake and sing me happy birthday, just the two of us in a corner of the park.”

 

He can barely get a word in edgewise between fireworks, now, but Tony’s close enough that it doesn’t matter.

 

“I used to think that they were all for me, like the whole world was celebrating my birthday.”

 

“That’s adorable.”

 

Steve snorts, shifting so he can look at Tony better.

 

“It was pretty dumb, actually.”

 

“Still adorable.”

 

Before he can argue more, Tony kisses him, the kind of kiss that’s solid and careful and  _ I want to do this for the rest of forever _ , as bright as the fireworks going off over their heads.

 

“Happy birthday, Steve.”

 

* * *

 

For the millionth time today, Steve slams his toe into a box. Yelping a curse, he stumbles sideways and manages to drop the bag of screws he’s holding - thankfully shut - and ends up with one shoulder against a wall, scowling at Tony, who’s doubled over laughing.

 

“Seriously? That’s like, the fourth time today you’ve hit that box!”

 

Grumbling, he picks up the screws and walks them over to his unsympathetic boyfriend, who thanks him with a quick kiss to the cheek.

 

“Maybe we should move it to a more convenient place.”

 

“There’s no room anywhere else.”

 

Steve looks around the room. It’s true - there are boxes covering nearly every available square inch of floorspace, leaving them a narrow walkway around the skeletal frame of the bed Tony’s been trying to build since they’d eaten lunch in the cramped kitchen on plates it’d taken them an hour to find amid unlabeled boxes.

 

“These are the wrong size.”

 

“Are you kidding me? There aren’t any more screws in the box!”

 

Tony chucks the bag at his head, and Steve catches it just in time, dropping it to the ground next to the half-made bed with a sigh. 

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“You can check for yourself.”

 

He sits down on the ground, leaning against the bit of wall they’d kept open for its outlet, watching Tony rummage through the mess of bed-building supplies in search of the right size screws. Finally, after way longer than it should’ve taken, he holds up a torn-open plastic baggie with a victorious cheer, and Steve sighs, relieved.

 

“Oh, thank god. I was  _ not _ going to offer to go down to the hardware store again. I think the poor clerk thinks I have no idea what a screw is.”

 

Tony snorts, leaning forward to jam the metal into its assigned hole.

 

“You know  _ plenty _ about screwing.”

 

Steve makes a vaguely embarrassed noise and bites down on a retort that definitely wasn’t going to come out right. They fall back into the same comfortable banter they’ve kept up since the bed-building process started, mostly Tony complaining about technical things Steve doesn’t really understand and getting snarky comments in return. It lasts for a while, until the sun goes down and Steve realizes they only have a single bare-bulb lamp in the entire apartment, and it’s in the other room. Tony continues complaining the entire time it takes him to move it into the bedroom, and then complains some more when it’s plugged in, because Steve has to sit all the way on the other side of the room now that the outlet is occupied.

 

By the time he’s finished, it’s late enough that they’re both yawning. It’s been a long day of moving boxes back and forth from both Tony and Peggy’s cars, filling their tiny little apartment to the brim with taped-shut cardboard. Neither of them are complaining now, though, not as they walk the mattress in from the living room and drop it on top of the frame. They don’t even complain during all of the two minutes it takes them to pull a sheet on it or the five minutes it takes for Tony to unbury the bag that holds the blanket he’d stolen from Virginia’s house, too thoroughly tired and happy. In the moment of truth, the bedframe gives a concerningly loud creak when Steve flops down on it, but ultimately holds. It protests a little more quietly when Tony does the same, staying almost silent as they settle down comfortably together. 

 

Steve leans over to turn out the light, the darkness descending on the room as they curl up together, wearing matching smiles.

 

“Welcome home, Tony.”

 

He gets a soft hum in response, then a gentle kiss.

 

“Welcome home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm on tumblr [@vystrx](http://vystrx.tumblr.com) if you wanna follow me there!


	9. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not gonna lie, i teared up at least three separate times writing this, and for once, it was because it's happy. without further ado: the epilogue!

The sound of his phone ringing jerks Steve out of a charcoal-dusted stupor. He hastily wipes his fingers on the leg of his pants, hoping he remembers to wash them, and grabs for the thing, grumbling at its insistent buzzing. Tony’s name is lighting up the screen, though, so he’s not really that upset about it. 

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hey.”

 

Tony sounds exhausted, like he’s been running uphill for at least an hour.

 

“Everything okay?”

 

“I’m sorry I’m late. I got held up at work, working on some stupid thing Mark’s convinced will make his sales any less shitty.”

 

Steve blinks at the clock on the other side of the room. Huh. He hadn’t realized it’d gotten so late.

 

“Anyways, I feel bad about missing dinner, so I’m stopping for that wine you really like. Except I can’t remember if it’s the one with the crown or with the weird guy’s face on the label?”

 

He sounds sheepish. Steve had eaten cold leftovers out of the Tupperware from the fridge hours ago, well before he even expected Tony home, so it’s not like he missed much, but he’s definitely not about to turn down fancy wine, either.

 

“The crown,” he says, leaning back in his chair with an easy smile. “I didn’t make anything special. There’s leftovers from last night, though, or I can order Chinese from that place you like.”

 

There’s a brief interlude of muffled talking that Steve guesses is Tony buying the bottle, so he stifles a yawn and starts cleaning his desk up a little, shutting off the light and meandering into the living room.

 

“Chinese sounds amazing. Delivery?” 

 

“Of course.”

 

“You’re the best.”

 

“Love you too.”

 

“I’ll be home soon. Love you!”

 

With that, Tony hangs up, leaving Steve chuckling at dead air. He finds the restaurant’s number in his contacts, settling down into the couch as he recites Tony’s order perfectly, thanking the young woman on the other line profusely when she says it’ll be there in half an hour. With that done, he doesn’t have much left to do other than wait. Of course, one thing leads to another, and after a long day hard at work at his desk, Steve’s pretty beat. Drawing is hard work, you know, especially when you’re running on no sleep because you happen to live with an insomniac that takes sadistic pleasure in jumping out of bed at three o’clock in the morning to weld something together in the living room. He ends up falling asleep, apparently, because next thing he knows, someone’s banging on the door. Still half-asleep, he jumps up and almost trips over the coffee table in his haste to answer it, the banging only getting louder and more insistent. 

 

“Yeah, hold on!”

 

He shouts in the vague direction of it, caught up briefly by the realization that he’s wearing charcoal all over himself. There’s a jacket flung over the back of a chair nearby, so he grabs it in an attempt to look a little more put-together, realizing it’s Tony’s the second he pulls it on and inhales cigarette smoke combined with his favorite aftershave. The banging starts up again, and Steve heaves a sigh, grabbing his wallet from the table by the door to pay whatever poor delivery kid they’d sent, clearly eager to get going. 

 

“Sorry, sorry-”

 

“Oh, thank god, I thought I was gonna have the break the damn thing down again. I forgot my keys.”

 

Tony breezes by Steve, leaving him slightly stunned and standing in the entryway, clutching his wallet.

 

“I paid for the Chinese, by the way,” he says over one shoulder as he puts the brown paper bag down on the table, “poor girl was standing in the lobby looking like she’d never seen an elevator before.”

 

He continues into their kitchen without so much as turning around, talking as he goes about unloading his armload of bags.

 

“I stopped by the corner store, too, and turns out they were having a  _ really _ great sale on that cereal we got last week, so I bought some, and-”

 

Steve follows him, leaning against the doorway and watching him ramble with a smile on his face. Tony only turns around when he yawns, blinking at him like he’d barely looked at him before.

 

“You’re wearing my jacket?”

 

It’s phrased like a question, and Steve realizes that he is, in fact, wearing Tony’s jacket, even though it’s the middle of June and it’s nowhere near cool enough for there to be a reason for him to be wearing it. 

 

“...Yeah?”

 

He smiles, shakes his head, and turns back to the bag on the counter, pulling the bottle of wine from it. Steve slips the jacket off his shoulders, draping it back over the chair he’d pulled it off of originally. He’s  _ tired _ , okay? It’d seemed like the perfect solution to his black-smeared shirt when he’d thought it was a delivery person at the door, not Tony. Oh well. He yawns again and turns for the bedroom, mumbling something to Tony about changing into clean clothes. By the time he wanders back into the living room, now wearing his favorite pajama pants and a worn-out hoodie he’d stolen from Tony a few years ago, there’s a plate of food and a glass of wine waiting for him on the table.

 

“How was work?”

 

Tony grunts around a mouthful of Chinese food, leaning back in his chair.

 

“I don’t think Mark understands that - as much as I’d like to - I can’t just pull a full program out of my  _ ass _ .”

 

Steve refrains from making yet another unmerited joke about Tony’s ass, instead taking a bite of his food and letting him blow off some steam. Clearly, he’s pretty fucking heated, because he barely stops ranting until Steve’s plate is almost empty, somehow managing to eat just as fast despite barely closing his mouth for more than a second at a time. It’s a talent Steve  _ still _ can’t understand quite how he does it, no matter how hard he tries. 

 

“-so I ended up telling him that if he wants a whole new program that badly, he can write one his damn self. He wasn’t happy about it, but it’s not like he can find another programmer half as good for the shit he’s paying me, so whatever.”

 

“ _ Tony _ ,” Steve sighs, wanting to tell him to stop mouthing off to his bosses because that’s what got him in the doghouse last time and  _ you know how that one ended, pal, and it wasn’t great _ , but he just shakes his head and gets up to put their plates in the sink, promising himself he’ll wash them later.

 

“I  _ know _ ,” he sighs back, standing up to refill both their glasses with wine, coming up behind Steve and kissing the back of his neck. He turns around, leaning against the edge of the counter to kiss him properly, wishing he could wipe away all the stress lines from his face, only leaving the ones that crinkle around his eyes when he smiles like he is when Steve pulls back far enough to take a sip of his wine.

 

“It’s nice out,” Tony tells him, taking his hand and leading him towards the door to their little balcony. They just bought new furniture for it, thankfully, because the old chairs had finally broken under the weight of the late-January freak snowstorm that had buried them in snow and left both of them to cozy up under all the blankets in their apartment for a solid two days. They settle down on the low couch facing out towards the railing, leaning into each other, glasses in hand. 

 

“Y’know what I was thinking about today?”

 

Tony takes another sip of his wine before answering.

 

“What?”

 

“Remember our first apartment? The one that didn’t have AC?”

 

“Yes, unfortunately. I’m still convinced my brain never recovered entirely from being boiled in my skull that year.”

 

Steve snorts. 

 

“We used to sit on top of each other just to stick our faces by that awful little window in the bedroom because it was the only place in the whole apartment that could catch a cool breeze.”

 

“And the poor woman across the street from us would get an eyeful every time.”

 

Good old memories. Steve remembers that apartment well, every damn inch of it. It’s not like there were that many inches to remember, anyways. It was hardly bigger than a shoebox, and in a crap neighborhood with neighbors that would fight into the small hours of the night, but it had been  _ theirs _ , and they’d loved it regardless.

 

“God, remember high school?”

 

Steve groans, tipping back the rest of his wine and going for the bottle on the table in front of them. 

 

“I don’t  _ want _ to.”

 

He fills Tony’s for him as well, getting a thank-you kiss on the cheek in return. They’re quiet for a while, lost in wine-flavored memories. Steve doesn’t think about high school very often. For good reason - it’s not like it was the best time in his life. Far from it, actually. He has much better things to be thinking about now, like the drawing he has to finish before the week’s out and the surprise birthday party he suspects Tony and Peggy are planning but can’t confront them about until he has some solid evidence, otherwise they’ll just laugh in his face and make better plans. But it’s nice, sometimes, to think about the past, just a little. Perspective and all that shit, you know? 

 

The strange thing about nostalgia is the way it sweetens everything it touches, makes all the bad parts not so painful. Still, even with its gentle touch, high school remains a dark blur on the horizon, one Steve isn’t exactly keen to think about for too long. 

 

“I don’t regret getting beaten up for you,” Tony says, uncomfortably loud in the quiet. Steve’s heart skips a beat at the unwelcome thought, the image of Tony laying loose and lifeless on the ground still clear as day. 

 

“You know I still feel terrible about that,” he chides, attempting to wash away the decades-old bitter taste in the back of his throat with the last of his wine. It works, for the most part, because Tony kisses him an apology, soft and familiar, and then it’s not so bad anymore. They go quiet again, this time because their glasses are empty and they’ve found that holding each other close and just enjoying the feeling of being able to relax so completely is so much better than thinking about times when they couldn’t. For a while, they just sit there, until Tony shakes him softly and Steve realizes he’s dozed off again.

 

“Bed?”

 

He answers with a yawn, and they make their way inside slowly. It’s beautiful out, despite the ever-present city smells and noises that took them both so long to get used to in the beginning, and neither of them want to leave it, but they do eventually in favor of their bed. It’s not new, falling asleep together, not in any respect, but it never makes Steve any less happy to close his eyes and know he’s holding the love of his life in his arms and he’s not going anywhere. 

 

* * *

 

Something buzzing by his head wakes Steve up. It’s loud.  _ Unreasonably _ so. Especially for this early in the morning. He sits up, looks over to find Tony still passed out next to him, and smiles. The world could be ending, and he’d only wake up if someone picked him up and threw him out of bed, and that’s on a good day. There’s still something buzzing. He realizes belatedly it’s his phone, alerting him not-so-quietly that Peggy’s calling him. 

 

“Hello?”

 

“Goddammit, Steve, I’ve been calling you for five minutes! I’m not supposed to be away from the office right now, the  _ least _ you could do is pick up your phone once in a while!”

 

“Morning to you too,” he grumbles, blinking sleep out of his eyes.

 

“It’s noon,” she informs him stiffly, though he can hear the smile she’s wearing. 

 

“Well,  _ afternoon _ , then.”

 

“Did you just wake up?”

 

“Yeah? It’s Saturday.”

 

“Friday.”

 

“Right. Friday. Tony doesn’t work Fridays,” he says, holding in a yawn. Peggy laughs a little on the other end, and he can hear her thinking  _ how the hell do you two even function _ ?

 

“Well, regardless of what day it is, I called you for a reason.”

 

“Reason being…?”

 

“The Mayor signed the bill. Seven minutes ago.”

 

“The bill.”

 

“Yes, Steve,  _ the bill _ . Remember? The one I was telling you about last week?”

 

“The marriage bill?”

 

Slow clap for his critical-thinking skills. In Steve’s defense, he did only  _ just _ wake up. He glances over at Tony, who’s still dead to the world. 

 

“It’s legal, Steve! In a month!”

 

“You’re kidding,” he whisper-shouts, standing up from the bed, suddenly too full of nervous energy to stay still. 

 

“Not one bit.”

 

“Holy shit.”

 

There are tears in his eyes, brimming over. Hastily, he swipes the back of one hand across his face, pulling open the bottom drawer of his dresser as quietly as possible, checking over his shoulder to see if Tony’s stirred at all. 

 

“I have to go, there’s media hell going on and I’m going to get ripped to shreds if I spend any longer on the phone.”

 

“Get back to work,” he says, softly, pulling out the tiny box he’d tucked away in the corner of the drawer and looking at it, “I’ll call you later.”

 

“Dinner,” she tells him, “tonight, at six. I’ll pick you up. My treat.”

 

“Six. See you then.”

 

“See you,” she says, and Steve almost goes to hang up, but he has one more thing he has to say.

 

“Peggy-”

 

“Steve?”

 

She has to go, he reminds himself. Make it quick.

 

“Thank you,” he whispers, voice thick with emotion.

 

“For what?”

 

“Everything. High school. All these years.  _ Thank you _ .”

 

“Of course,” comes the reply, hurried but sincere.  _ I would do it all again if I had to _ . 

 

“You should get going. I’ll see you later.”

 

“Right. Tell Tony congratulations for me.”

 

“I will.”

 

She hangs up, and Steve is left sitting cross-legged on the ground, looking at the box in his hands.  _ It’s legal _ . He stands up, tucking it in his pocket, and walks around to the other side of the bed. 

 

“Tony,” he whispers, shaking his shoulder. When he doesn’t get a response, he tries again, this time a little harder. “Wake up.”

 

This time, Tony groans something unintelligible and rolls over, throwing an arm over his face.

 

“Tony,” he repeats, this time a little more urgently, and gets another grumble that he’s not sure is even English, so he shakes him one last time, finally getting his attention for real.

 

“Huh? Wha’ time’s it?”

 

“Time to wake up,” Steve says, his heart going so fast it’s a wonder he’s even managing to talk at all. Tony sits up, squinting at him, and yawns.

 

“What’s wrong? Building on fire?”

 

“No, it’s-”

 

Steve stops. How does he say this? How does someone even do this?  _ We can get married in a month, Tony, they signed it. We don’t have to hide anymore! _

 

“It’s what?”

 

He sounds genuinely concerned. Steve realizes he probably sounds more than a little bit like a lunatic right about now, standing next to the bed and only really half-awake himself. He takes a deep breath and puts his hand in his pocket, touching the soft velvet of the box hidden there. 

 

“I have to ask you something.”

 

“Okay..?”

 

Steve gets down on one knee. Tony blinks at him, confused, and then it dawns on his face all at once when he pulls out the box and opens it to show him the ring.

 

“Tony Stark, will you marry me?”

 

The words hang in the air, sounding every bit as impressive as they have in his head for years now.

 

“Marry you? Is it… did it pass?”

 

There are tears shining in his eyes. Steve nods, and Tony slides out of bed, straight into his arms.

 

“Yes,” he whispers between kisses, “ _ yes _ , of course I will.”

 

They’re both crying when he slides the ring onto his finger, the tears sliding down their faces for all the years they’d sat and wished,  _ hoped _ they’d be able to say it one day, all the time they’d spend being afraid to be themselves. They’re crying for every day they’d spent together in school, terrified to even look at each other too fondly, every day they’d walked a foot apart on the sidewalk just to get home safe, every day they’d had to wake up and hide from the world all over again. They’re crying for everyone that’s ever made them feel like they don’t deserve this, like they’re wrong or broken for loving each other. For Marcus and his posse, for the kids that had found out about Tony when Steve was a sophomore in college and forced them to move not only once, but twice, for everyone that still gives them dirty looks when they go out to dinner. 

 

They’re crying for the freedom they have, finally, to stand at the altar and declare their love to the world.

 

“I love you,” Steve tells him, brimming over with happiness, “I can’t wait to call you my husband.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want to take a quick moment to extend a heartfelt thank-you to everyone that's read, left kudos, or commented on this fic. i was super nervous about jumping straight into the marvel fandom with a chaptered fic that deals with some pretty heavy stuff & you all have been so lovely to me. so, thank you guys so much for making this fic something special, because i couldn't have done it without you!  
> also, i want to say a super-special thank you to my incredible best friend, beta, and all-around cheerleader moa (check her out @knucklehead!!!) for being patient, kind, and arguably more excited about this fic than me. you're the one that made this happen in the first place <3


End file.
